It’s not the kind of title you expect to see on The Vibes, so let’s embrace the unexpected for a moment here. The remaining movies which accompany Goldfrapp’s Tales Of Us album were leaked recently, and for just a fleeting moment I was able to steal some screen caps from the video for Jo, which seems to be about split personalities and murderous passion. The result is this imaginary movie poster, continuing the horror theme which snakes through the album.
“Quick! Look out the window!” called my neighbour. “Is it the sun setting or the moon rising?”
“Hurry, it’s beautiful.” Above the fir trees was a glaring ball of burning honey and blood. A sunset on the wrong side of the world. Huge and bright, waiting behind the chimney pots, and threatening to disappear beneath thickening clouds, The Harvest Moon. As I grabbed my camera, the tv chattered happily about an old king, now dethroned, who panicked when the money-lenders and merchants ran off with all the money.
Focus, night setting, keep still. Keep stiller.
The people were left to beg for food in the streets as the moguls fled to their off-shore towers, said the tv. My fiery moon was about to boil away, and be sucked up into the deep purple blanket above it. A rare and fleeting vision lost to shaky hands and digital zoom.
“If they can’t buy food or put petrol in their cars, they will just smash the windows and help themselves,” said the old king. My moment was fading fast. “Shall we put soldiers on every corner?” Just press the button. If you take a lot of pictures, one of them is bound to be good. And people think I’m a photographer.
In ancient times, people fashioned dolls out of corn as offerings to the great and indefinable moon. It would ensure a good enough harvest to survive the winter. And then Santa would come. As I tried to capture the magic on the horizon, I wondered what we could sacrifice today.
If we were Pagan.
Who would be screaming from the Wicker Man? Would the wolves in the shadows be slavering for Barbecued Bankers to fall? Would they leave the Religious Extremists because they were only half-baked? We would never get it past Health and Safety.
The hidden painter inside me often collides with pixels. For an artist, I’m more likely to be messing around with iPad apps than actually throwing paint at a canvas. And graphic design is so clean since the world went digital. Rather than pay a fortune for Photoshop or Illustrator, the designers amongst us can download a painting app for nothing. Grab a stylus and you can create a work of art on the tram, or in the bath. I’ve rendered some of my more colourful photographs as digital paintings and this is the first example. There’s no magic button: you do actually have to paint, but you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
The spellbinding sound of Goldfrapp playing to their strengths is driving fandom wild. Teaser track Drew was released as a beautiful video on Monday, and Manchester is holding it’s breath for the album reveal, live at The Albert hall, Manchester. This particular Albert Hall is an ancient chapel, which suits the nourish, classical feel to Goldfrapp’s songwriting: haunting tunes and echoes of movie soundtracks. Accompanied by a choir and a 20-piece string orchestra, courtesy of The Royal Northern College of Music, this looks like being a night to remember in Manchester’s most haunted building. 
California, England. It’s not where you expect to find a California, but there it is, clinging to the Norfolk cliffs, next to Scratby. We would tell our schoolfriends we went to California every year on vacation, slightly forgetting to mention it was 6000 miles to the right of the one in the States. And marginally less glamorous. Or hot. This is the Pleasure Beach in Great Yarmouth, the highlight of every childhood summer holiday.
Yours truly squinting in the sun. Some very lovely old beach huts here, next to the rackety old fun fair.
A relic from the 70s, when the world was high on Star Wars and the fair was a riot of screaming colour and noise.
The Pink Panther says it all, really, doesn’t he? Still here.
I’m saying goodbye to Scratby, driving off through the chocolate-box villages to Kent.
Episodes one, two and three are here ‘if you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air…’
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© My artwork, photography and music are copyright Mark Wallis 2015
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