SYNOPSES

 

A selection of covers from Synopsis, the inhouse magazine for Dutch chemical company SYNRES (Synthetic Resins). These date from 1960 to 1967, and were designed by Newman Neame Limited.

START WITH THE MANDATORIES

Before YouTube, there was the cheaply made VHS tutorial. 1995's Perfect Individual Routine (the follow up to Perfect Posing) tells us aspiring competitive bodybuilders all we need to know about how to make the most of a mere 90 seconds on stage, including smooth transitions, choosing the right music and, of course, the correct form for special auxiliary poses. It really is the definitive guide to 'hide specific weaknesses and highlight strengths in a KILLER routine'.    

ONESELF AT THE HELM

Sam Sobie Sterem, d. Katarzyna Latallo (1971)

I've seen a few translations of the original Polish title, mainly variations of 'I'm in Control'. But this hapless looking gentleman isn't in control of anything, least of all himself and his environment, as the director places him in a series of unnatural settings (a void, the pages of a book, underground) and makes him gyrate and perform, all the while flooding the frame with psychedelic colour and solarisation effects. It's pleasing to note that the director is a woman, and this is the early seventies, so it makes a change to see a bloke being messed about.

TRUE STORY

 

THE SPECTACLE OF THE AGES

When boring people bang on about 'health & safety', you can always thread the 1928 film Noah's Ark into the conversation. This epic Hollywood movie (a transitional talkie, i.e. sound technology became available towards the end of filming and they incorporated it where they could) culminates in a recreation of The Great Flood, with 600,000 gallons of water being pumped onto a set filled with thousands of extras. Three drowned, one had to have his legs amputated, and there were dozens of other serious injuries.

Director Michael Curtiz later avoided a repeat of this debacle by setting Casablanca in the desert. 

These screenshots are taken just before the disaster, and feature pagan demagogue King Nephilim, and Jaguth, their imposing and terrifying Jacob Epstein-like idol. Don't worry, they'll both soon be underwater, and then Noah and his kids can repopulate the world with nice proper Christian people.

HANS JEAN (ARP) / JEAN HANS (ARP)

 

 

Ein Nabel / A Navel (1923)

DEMONS OF THE PSYCHEDROME

Issue 94, week ending August 4th, 1976.

Obviously inspired by the incorporation of Dracula Lives into the Planet Of The Apes comic in issue 88, this cover gleefully ramps up the usually neglected gothic horror aspect of the series to exhilarating effect.

THE IMAGE IS THE SOUND

 

Dresden Dynamo, d. Lis Rhodes (1971)

While still a student at North East London Polytechnic, Lis Rhodes applied a range of Letratone stickers directly onto 16mm film and used filters to create red and blue colours. No camera was used.

On projection, the stickers create a range of unusual and atonal sounds: buzzes, fuzz, bleeps and throbs, and these random sounds complement the pulsing images as if by design.

Rhodes said later: 'It was an attempt to make a material connection between what is seen and what is heard. The image is the sound.'

If any of you are familiar with my musical project, Beam Weapons, and ever wondered what inspires some of the noises we make, simply watch this film, a source of ongoing inspiration.

Supplemental: Dynamo Dresden are a German football team formed in 1953, originally affiliated to the East German Police, then the Stasi, the secret police and state security agency. Highly successful during the lifespan of the DDR, often by nefarious means (intimidating referees, transfer fixing, blackmail, violence and murder) they have fared less well since reunification, and currently play in the German Third Division.

FILE UNDER POST PUNK

 

prag VEC: Bits / Wolf / Existential / Cigarettes

Spec Records (1978)

'There is no future, 'cause you're in a fiction'

Accomplished and confident, occasionally strident, prag VEC released two singles, and recorded three sessions for John Peel. Their name is a conflation of Pragmatic and Vector,  too complex for Ingsoc but very Philip K. Dick.

Beneath their paint spattered punk facade, Bits and Wolf have a quirky Canterbury poly-rhythm going on, an almost progressive rock-ist interest in complex time signatures and interesting chords involving lots of fingers. These short, sweet, swervy blasts are agit-prop nursery rhymes played by supply teachers high on sexual politics, radical economics and arts centre poetry.  

Existential is the pick of the bunch, a sultry slow burner punctuated by angry, intellectual sounding French language narration and a series of wild, jagged guitar solos. It's tremendous, Stereolab plus steroids. 

Finally, there's Cigarettes, which marries a busy pub rock riff with a seemingly throwaway lyric about 'the fags we smoke' ('don't forget the menthol, though they're not so common now'). The crux, however, is that the fug of multiple exhalation obscures real issues. I mean, why even try to tackle world peace or famine or inequality when you can sit around with your mates like lotus eaters sucking on a B and H and talking rubbish? 

In any event, distraction devices or not, the band fully intend to 'smoke them until we die', a common attitude among dedicated addicts, and one that I used to fervently share. Now, like an ex who you cross the street to avoid, I wonder what I ever saw in them. Cigarettes, I mean, prag VEC are great.

GROTESQUE ROCK FORMATIONS

 

My eleven year old self was absolutely obsessed with Alien in 1979, although I wasn't able to see it until 1981, when it finally came out on VHS. I did, however, have the novelisation, and The Book Of Alien, a fantastic compendium of stills, sketches and extracts from the script. I have no idea where either of those went. I also had a small collection of bubblegum cards of which this is the only known survivor and is, therefore, my favourite in the series.