I am delighted to announce Repeater Books will be publishing "The English Heretic Collection" anthology on October 13th 2020. As a taster and supplementary to the sample pages, I thought it would be good to create a play list of music to accompany the book.
Rather than hawk any of the English Heretic musical asides, what follows might be considered a mood board of correspondences. In compiling the list, I've tried not to deviate too greatly from the accompanying narrative, and many of the pieces are explicitly (if often briefly) referenced in the book. Some pieces bleed across chapters, as do themes in the writing. For example, might Annie Anxiety's seedy, nocturnal kerb crawl also exist along the Western Avenue of "Anti-Heroes"? Or does John Cale's alcoholic katabasis, "Dying on the Vine", imbibe from the verdigris troughs of "The Underworld Service Guidebook"? And Mount Vernon Art Lab's "Warminster IV" intrudes my reality, across many skies, from a fly agaric Rendlesham to Rael's epiphany in "Volcano Adventures".
As I've mentioned in the book's preface, the anthology, in some ways, represents an anti-pattern or a fossil cleaved from the multimedia chimera of most of the releases. And this play list seems to curate a new museum from the anthology. With exhibits like Mountain's "Nantucket Sleighride", once the headbanging Sunday afternoon theme to Weekend World, indexed alongside the end-time, plainsong poem of Current 93's "Falling Back in Fields of Rape", the playlist holds a personal hippocampal, natural history of its own. Perhaps, one day a new species of writing will spore from these songs.
This isn't a top ten list, many personal favourites, omitted, and some included, seemingly bedecked in the bunting of traditional nostalgia, for example Elgar. Those who recall Wyrd Tales 1, might recognise that piece's groaning melancholy was sampled for a horrific Home Guard path-working. A story, gleefully reassembled in entirety for the anthology.
For those without too much of a pure soul, you can listen to the stream over at Spotify. That said, everything belongs in my collection, bar Al Stewart's epic rendition of "Nostradamus". I actually prefer Peter Bellamy's version, but couldn't source it there. I'd obviously encourage you to dig out physical copies, where still available.
Preface
Raymond Cass - The Ghost Orchid
The New Geography of Witchcraft: A Black Plaque for Michael Reeves
Forest - Graveyard
Electric Wizard - Eko Eko Azarak
Phantoms of Liberty
Al Stewart - Nostradamus
Jacqueline du Pre - Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor
Modern Qliphoth
Coil - Batwings
Annie Anxiety - Third Gear
Kalacakra - Nearby Shiras
Mount Vernon Arts Lab - Warminster 4
A Black Plaque for Angel Blake
Marc Williamson - Children into Church
"Anti-Heroes"
Shirley Collins - A Blacksmith Courted Me
John Cameron - Riding Free
Mondo Paranoia
Steinski - The Motorcade Sped On
George Crumb - Black Angels: 1, Departure
Plan for the Kidnap of Princess Anne
Cabaret Voltaire - Baader Meinhof
Roy Budd - Get Carter (Main Theme)
The Underworld Service
Einsturzende Neubauten - Morning Dew (Bonnie Dobson cover)
Julian Cope - They Were On Hard Drugs
A Study of Lunar Research Flights
Popol Vuh - Bruder des Schattens
Crass - Asylum
Volcano Adventures
John Cale - Dying on the Vine
Judy Collins - Marat / Sade
Wyrd Aesthetics
Robert Ashley - Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon
Summer of Blood
Love - You Set the Scene
Wish you were Heretic
William Burroughs - From "Cities of the Red Night"
Current 93 - Falling Back in Fields of Rape (excerpt)
Closing Ceremonies
Mountain - Nantucket Sleighride