FILE UNDER POST PUNK

Everybody has a record in them. It may not be a double album, it may not be any good, but it's there, waiting to be pulled out. The post punk era facilitated many such extractions, from eager and energetic boys and girls who spent a couple of hours and a few quid in a cheap local studio and committed the results to black plastic for future generations to blog about. 

File Under Pop (full irony to be revealed) released a solitary 45, a three track effort where two of the tracks were recorded live at London Heathrow Airport. These tracks are not musical in any conventional sense, consisting of nothing but snatches of ambience, tinny tannoy announcements, overheard conversations and a series of unnerving inorganic noises including at least one electronic arcade game and what sounds like a witch being electrocuted. They are  jarring, badly recorded and compressed to hell, and sound like a space age migraine. I went to Heathrow for the first time in 1978, and its escalators and beige and yellow modernity pretty much blew my ten year old mind, so I completely understand the appeal. 

There is a non-Heathrow track which is the only one where they sound like a 'band'. It consists of a spiky one minute guitar and bass riff over which someone reads quotes from newspapers about Mary Bell (a child who murdered another child) in a Lord Haw Haw voice. How was this not a hit?  

The sleeve features a single light bulb in an otherwise darkened room, a common trope of the era, not least because it looked impressive in monochrome, the colour scheme de l'epoque being predominantly black, white and grey. The lonely light has an undeniably sinister feel, and speaks of tunnels, disused factories, musty cellars, torture chambers, nightmares. It is a light that accentuates the darkness around it rather than illuminating it. 

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

The Telidon System (1979-1985 approximately) was a Canadian telephone communication process which enabled the exchange of visual information, a forerunner of Videotex / Teletext and a precursor to advanced computer and game graphics. Developed at a cost of several hundred million dollars, Telidon didn't fulfil its potential and, ultimately, faded away as new developments surged ahead of it.

Pierre Moretti's film Graphic Variations On Telidon, despite sounding like the title of a brainy sci fi parable, showcases the system's ground-breaking capabilities. The visuals are (by current standards) limited, but very charming, with a mid-century feel that reminds me of an etch-a-sketch or the tin plate tube kaleidoscopes which served as entertainment before more spectacular things for kids to look at came along. 

Made in 1980, when hopes for the Telidon were still high, this eight minute film was a product of the National Film Board Of Canada, the greatest of all state run cultural organisations. 

DANCE AWAY

I'm too clumsy and self-conscious to be a dancer, so I try and avoid it wherever I can. Dance, however, is a wonderful thing, even as a spectator sport. In this new intermittent (aren't they all?) series, I'll be posting pictures of people dancing - you can provide your own soundtrack.

Here are some young (and young-ish) Estonian people dancing in a 1980s commercial for, I kid you not, accordions. 

THERE AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A TRAUTONIUM PARTY

The Trautonium is an electric Synthesizer invented by Friedrich Trautwein in 1930. Trautwein's apprentice,  Oskar Sala, loved the instrument so much that he spent the next 72 years playing it and perfecting its design.

In 1963, Sala used an iteration of the Trautonium to provide the eerie chittering soundscapes that provide the only score for Hitchcock's last masterpiece, The Birds.

A fascinating mix of organ, synth and souped up electric cello, the instrument straddles the olde worlde and the science fiction-y simultaneously and, perhaps unsurprisingly, failed to break into public consciousness. Sadly, since Sala's death in 2002, this labour of love has fallen further into obscurity, with only a handful of people left in the world who know how to play it.

See it, and Sala, in action HERE.