A Hauntological Holiday Happening Summoning Up the Ghosts of Christmas Past with Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, Tim Wells, Stonecirclesampler and Travis Elborough
Doors: 2:30
An afternoon of festive-ish words, moving pictures and performances dedicated to the decade of Smash instant potato, public information films and Evans the Arrow.
Sophie Sleigh-Johnson is a Southend-on-Sea based writer, artist and performer and the author of Code-Damp , a sometimes comedic field report that charts an esoteric code hidden within the twin poles of 1970s sitcoms Rising Damp and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
Tim Wells is made of reggae, lager top, pie and mash, and Leyton Orient FC and loves nothing more than the great smell of Brut.
Stonecirclesampler aka Luke J Murray is the musical purveyor of excellent hauntological and industrial ambient and drill mutations for such labels as Industrial Coast, The Tapeworm and Brachliegen Tapes.
Travis Elborough is an award-winning author hailed by The Guardian as “one of the country’s finest pop culture historians.”
Together they’ll go in search of the wilted tinsel of yesteryear to serve up a leftover banquet of mouldy spuds and cold damp turkey, metaphorically anyway.
In honour of the occasion Stonecirclesampler has produced a special limited edition Dismal 1970s cassette - which you can pre-order with your ticket and collect on the night. These will be a super short run only available to attendees so buy now to avoid disappointment.
Biogs:
Sophie Sleigh-Johnson is a Southend-on-Sea-based writer. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths College, London, where she now teaches as an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies. Her performance work, comprising sound collage and spoken word with printmaking props, occasions numerous performances both nationally and internationally. Her book Code Damp is an alternative occult and esoteric history of England told through one of its most popular cultural forms: the comedy sitcom and twin poles of Rising Damp and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Drawing connections between incidents of ancient and popular culture, from Mark E. Smith’s lyric— “They say damp records the past”—to Rising Damp’s (meta)physical structure of decay, the book finds damp’s temporal power manifest in everything from alchemy, mysticism, and parish folklore to pulp, Time Team, darts, the local newspaper and, of course, the sitcom. Merging the vast with the parochial, the occult with the comedic, Code: Damp tunes into the weird demands of damp as a time-traveling material at the intersections of comedy, myth and technology, taking all three as serious resources to better (dis)orient the ground we stand on.
Tim Wells is made of reggae, lager top, pie and mash, and Leyton Orient FC and loves nothing more than the great smell of Brut. He is also the 'Suedehead bard of Stoke Newington' and founding editor of magazine Rising, whose own poetry collections include the Forward Prize shortlisted Boys' Night Out in the Afternoon. His latest book, and following on from his brilliant pulp horror skinhead novels Moonstomp and Shine On, is Crown and Anchor a collection of short stories to chill the blood based around car boot sales.
Luke J Murray is a man of many musical aliases, releasing and performing variously as: Superior Grime London Blue DNB-like South Sand Dynamics Luke Marblex The In 2.5G Label White Dark Rainfall J Escape NCR London The From Cracks In Concrete 900Cold Liquid DJ Pulp Grime Murray The endorphin Old 0161 Conflicting 2 Solo Widens Damage Ambient Glow Electronics and Stonecirclesampler
Described by The Guardian as ‘one of the country’s finest pop culture historians’, Travis Elborough’s books include Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the BBC4 documentary When Albums Ruled the World, in which he also appeared, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles and Atlas of Vanishing Places, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.
