Part 2 of my interview with Magic Bullet producer / writer / audio dramatist Alan Stevens picks up where we left off and hits the following topics: knowing when to end stories, the creative potential and individual fulfillment to be had in writing with licensed properties, why Avon and Iago are psychopathic bastards (or are they the same psychopathic bastard?), and of course, Faustian bargains. As in part 1 of this interview, audio clips from Kaldor City are embedded throughout. Additional sound clips from Magic Bullet’s The True History of Faction Paradox audio serial can be found in my overview of that series here.  To go directly to Magic Bullet’s website, click their logo above.

Stevens is a unique voice in the field, and whether you agree with his positions or not, you can’t fault the dedication, quality, or intelligence behind his work. Whether you consider yourself a “genre fan” or “above such things”, if you value good audio drama then you need to read this interview.

CD: So at this point you don’t know what’s up next for Magic Bullet after Faction Paradox concludes?

AS: No idea at all. There might be something else, but, then again, there might not. There might be a huge gap and then something. You get that with my stuff – we did Coming to Dust and The Ship of a Billion Years, followed by this huge gap, and then suddenly we appeared again with Body Politic, Words from Nine Divinities and Ozymandias. Part of the reason for this was that I wasn’t sure how well Faction Paradox was going to sell, and the amount of sales affects the amount of money you have to spend on the series. Faction didn’t sell as well as Kaldor City initially, but then it picked up a lot, and it now sells very well. Sales are good and people like it. However, I still don’t believe you should carry on with a series beyond its natural life, just because the sales are good. I just don’t see the point of going through the motions and carrying on with something, if you think the story’s been told. Does that make sense?

CD: It makes perfect sense. I’ve often had the same feeling, that it’s a shame when stories are exhausted and carried on for pure profit beyond their natural lifespan. So it’s refreshing to hear you say that.

AS: Good. There are TV shows out there that should have ended three years ago, but are still going because the profit margins are good.

CD: I did want to ask about that – in terms of commercial audio drama production (outside of the BBC) Britain’s evolved a peculiar culture distinct from the United States and Germany. In the US, there’s original work, original serials, adaptations of novels and things like that, in Germany there’s a lot of children’s drama and work based on older pulp novels and some original serials, whereas in Britain commercial audio drama seems to be largely defined mostly by spin-offs from mostly defunct British television science fiction. I was wondering, since you’re one of the forces that has put that forward, why do you think the British market has evolved with that emphasis?

AS: In Britain the last drama to have an audience bigger than television on radio was Journey into Space in 1955. When television came along, basically, and audience stopped listening to audio drama and started watching television. I think the reason why Big Finish appeared was because Doctor Who had been off the air for seventeen years and people missed it, and probably many of them had, like me, tape-recorded Doctor Who stories off the television when they were kids, so they were primed for audio. Of course, I’m sure you know that various Doctor Who stories were stupidly wiped by the BBC, and only exist as audios now because they were tape-recorded on first broadcast by fans. And so this culture within fandom for audio developed.

Personally, I wouldn’t produce anything that isn’t in some way connected to an established series, because without a huge advertising budget, I can’t make a big enough impact on people to buy it.  Shall I buy something l know, like Doctor Who or Blake’s 7, or shall I buy something I’ve never heard of before? The fact is that the audio market is mainly aimed at fandoms, as it’s mainly fandoms who are buying audio stuff. And there’s not a lot of ‘original drama,’ if, indeed, there is such a thing, being made because people just won’t buy it. I know people who have produced their own stand alone dramas, and they have generally failed to sell any more than two hundred copies. You might take a chance on buying a film you’ve never seen before, but with audio drama, there’s this barrier now, because people think in TV terms and not radio terms. As for mainstream America, there appears to be virtually no market at all for radio plays.

CD: It’s a small market.

AS: We have a history of radio plays in Britain, but perhaps there wasn’t one in America. Germany, perhaps there was a strong history – I don’t know how well stuff in Germany sells -

CD: It sells pretty well, apparently.

AS: If it’s successful as a new series in its own right, then perhaps there’s a stronger bias toward radio than there is in Britain and certainly in America.

CD: Well, there’s a different audio drama pop culture history to all three countries. In the USA it’s currently mostly original stuff, but it’s probably mostly original stuff that doesn’t sell very well, as you were saying. It’s mostly just the hard-core audio drama fans -

AS: I’ve had people approach me saying I’ve got this great idea for a series – in fact, there’s a friend of mine who I worked with on a series called The Unworthy about a motorcycle gang who were actually the original Knights of the Round Table. It was this black, anarchic comedy, and we even wrote a script. But I’d never produce it as a direct-to-CD product, because I just don’t think it would sell. Not that I think it isn’t any good; I think it’s brilliant. But it hasn’t got that connection there. There are certain stories and characters within Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 that are highly regarded, that people are willing to buy into. But an audio series of Star Cops – would that sell? I don’t know. It hasn’t been on British TV for about twenty years. You have to be very careful choosing what you do, because it can really cost you if it fails, because audio drama is so very expensive.

CD: Especially, I think, to do it on the level that you do.

AS: If you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it to the best of your ability. I’ve known some producers who have said, I want this out by Christmas, and they’ve rushed to hit that deadline. I think that’s just crazy. At the end of the day, I want to be proud of what I’ve done and not feel we compromised it because we had to get it out for Christmas.

CD: I think that standard is apparent in your productions.

AS: Thank you.

Download audio file (13_Kaldor_City_Clip_8.mp3)

(Robot V23 “talks” to the Chief Fixer in this surreal clip from Kaldor City Story Six: Storm Mine.)

CD: Absolutely. You wrapped up Kaldor City on a metaphysical note. Storm Mine was almost dreamlike, and seemed to appeal to an almost subconscious understanding of the characters rather than the more linear story prior to it. Faction Paradox is teeming with ideas, most of them about time. And yet, in terms of narrative structure the series is actually pretty linear. It mainly follows these two heroines who jump around in time, but once they’re set in their new time zone, they basically progress from start to finish. If there’s one disappointment I would have with the series thus far, it’s that it would be fascinating to hear what a “weapon that can rewrite history” sounds like. Narratively, sonically – these are things Lawrence Miles could surely write, and Alistair Lock could surely realize in sound – they have the skills to do that. There’s a way in which the more advanced ideas about time are never incorporated into the narrative structure – they’re more like trappings or context for the more straightforward drama that plays out.

AS: I can’t really comment, because a lot of the things you’re pointing out here are addressed in the last two episodes.

CD: I’m looking forward to them.

Do you personally have any ambitions to do your own original work in any medium, or do you feel soul-satisfied in pushing these established properties further, I think, than they’ve ever been? This is something I’ve been thinking about over the years, because more and more I’ve come to recognize that a lot of the people who work on established properties are genuine talents. It certainly seems that there are a lot of people feeling very fulfilled doing great work within pre-established universes. Is that the case for you, or do you have the urge to birth a completely original Alan Stevens world?

AS: Kaldor City has the surface elements of The Robots of Death and Blake’s 7, but there’s a lot of other stuff going on in there. New characters, new takes on older characters as they face different situations. Kaldor City was something more than a pastiche of old glories, it was trying to do something different. It was a Magic Bullet – it had a surface coating of Blake’s 7 and The Robots of Death, but the core of it was something else. If I had just done a series without the Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who trappings, then no-one would have bought it. But working within that coating allowed me to say a lot of things and do a lot of things that I wanted to say and do.

You have to sell some CDs or you’re not going to be able to fund the project. If you’re going to do a six-part series, you effectively have to ensure it sells, because it costs thousands and thousands of pounds to produce. If Coming to Dust had just sold two hundred copies there wouldn’t have been any more Faction Paradox CDs after that one, because the finance wouldn’t have been there to do it. So it has to sell.

CD: Between that statement and the work that you’ve done you’ve provided the most compelling argument I’m aware of in the audio drama field for the vitality of working creatively within that coating, as you describe it. On the other hand, I think you would agree that what you do is quite different from taking the safest route: producing work as close as possible to what came before. To really emulate the original shows and their plot lines to the point where you could slot them into a preceding TV season. I’ve never watched Blake’s 7 so I can’t speak to that. But my impression of what you do is that you always push these concepts and characters into new territory, and you inject a literate, intellectual component that isn’t always there in the original source material.

AS: I’m not sure how true that is. Chris Boucher once told me that anyone who tells you they’ve come up with a completely original idea is either a liar, or insane, and probably both. If you look at an episode of anything, you can crack it back to something else. And if you forensically take most stories apart, you can often find some interesting ideas within them. They may not have been consciously put in by the author, but they’re there, and part of the process of analyzing a story is to find those elements and bring them out.

Also, it’s a case of seeing what a writer’s done, how the audience reacted to it, and working with that. For example, one of the things that annoyed the hell out of me concerning Blake’s 7 was the treatment of Avon by certain fans. Yes, there was this setup within the series where the audience frequently didn’t know whether he was doing something for selfish, or for altruistic reasons, but generally, and Paul Darrow, the guy who played him, says this, Avon was a bastard. In fact such a bastard, he shot and killed Blake, the show’s title character. Even the programme’s producers have described Avon as a psycho. And yet, often you’d find articles by people trying to justify his more extreme acts. “Oh well, he may have killed Blake, but Blake should have explained himself more clearly.” So when Iago appeared, also played by Paul Darrow, I didn’t want to fall into the same trap, and so really tried to push the character as far as I could, to make his actions appear shocking. There’s a scene in Hidden Persuaders where Iago tells Blayes that he can get her out of this dangerous situation, but first the hostages will have to be dealt with, as they can identify who she is. He then goes over and shoots them. And they are terrified, and he’s clearly getting a kick out of it.

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_9.mp3)

Now, you can understand that sort of behaviour, but you can’t excuse it. Some people say, “I don’t believe Iago is Avon, because Avon wouldn’t do things like that.” Well, I don’t care whether you believe he’s Avon or not, but what I certainly don’t want you doing is looking for excuses to justify murderous and sociopathic behaviour. So when you’re writing, you’re thinking “What did the writers/producers originally intend, where, if at all, did it go wrong, what was the audience reaction, and, if it did go wrong, how can I avoid falling into a similar pit?”

Another idea I like very much is having an authority figure come along and say, “this and that has happened”, where, in fact, no such thing has happened at all. In Occam’s Razor, Carnell comes up with a self serving motivation to explain the Firstmaster killings, but in reality, nobody really knows why Iago went off and killed all those people. And it’s the same for the Shakespearean Iago, why the hell did he behave that way? There are a number of motivations assigned to him in Othello, and he even assigns some to himself, but we don’t really know why he did what he did. Maybe the character didn’t even know himself.

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_10.mp3)

(Iago tests the limits of Landerchild’s grasp of reality in this philosophical clip from The Prisoner, a short Kaldor City play included on MJTV’s The Actor Speaks 4: Paul Darrow.)

People are very susceptible to being told what to think by authority figures, and that such and such is the current state of affairs, where in fact the real situation is most probably completely different. For instance, I’ve read a number of reviews of Taren Capel, where it’s been stated that, “in this episode Iago discovered that the Tarenists were trying to get hold of a special trigger phrase to activate the killer robots”. But in actual fact, Iago made that up. The trigger phrase existed, but the Tarenists didn’t know anything about it. Iago’s primary intention was to discredit Carnell and get him killed, and he was willing to say anything to achieve that. And yet, because Iago is an ‘authority figure,’ and he has a deep voice and he says all of this, and Uvanov, another ‘authority figure,’ believes him, people think, “well, then it must be true”. But I don’t think it’s true. In fact, I know it isn’t true. I bloody wrote it!

So in Kaldor City there are competing narratives and everything is subverted. A lot of the things you are told are completely wrong. Some of the things Carnell said were lies. And Iago by definition is a liar. Paullus was deluded, and Uvanov was a paranoid, who had various ideas and conspiracies in his mind that were just plain fantasy. They were the architects of their own destruction, because they failed to comprehend what was going on around them, preferring instead to just carry on fighting their own personal and petty little wars. So as with the real world, in Kaldor City we have people who are deluded, people who are fantasists, people who are just plain liars, and people who, for their own various reasons, want to believe them.

CD: Oh, absolutely. The need to believe invented premises, I feel, has been the American story under Bush.

AS: There was an unfortunate coincidence, when Occam’s Razor came out; it had been recorded in 2000, but was released in early September 2001, and the first review I read of it tied 9/11 to a scene where a flyer crashed into a building. There was no way I knew that was going to happen – it was written perhaps seventeen or eighteen months before those events took place. And yet, because I was fishing in the same pool, because we were dealing with terrorism and fanaticism, the story strangely started to mirror things that were happening in real life. It’s weird that, isn’t it? If you think like a terrorist … I think Alan Moore was exploring this in V for Vendetta, when he had this guy, who was trying to get into the mindset of V, taking the same drugs V had been forced to take, and wandering around the same camp where V had been experimented on, so he would start to think like him, and would perhaps know what he was going to do next. It was quite shocking when I realized, “Good grief, we are fishing in the same pool as Bin Laden.”

As for George Bush, there are again parallels with Kaldor City in that people have plans, but these plans usually go horribly wrong. I’m sure in Bush’s head there were a number of very good reasons for invading Iraq, but he’s never going to tell us what they were and the result was a terrible disaster. In Kaldor City, Uvanov would have a plan, and Carnell would have a plan, and Landerchild would have a plan, and in fact everyone would have a plan, and you don’t even know what all the plans were, and then they’d all go horribly wrong. So what you ended up with was a mass of mistakes and errors caused through stupidity and misunderstanding, with no one knowing what the hell was going to happen next. And that’s what life is. Life’s frequently like that for me. I think: “What the hell was that about? Why did I do that?”

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_11.mp3)

(Uvanov watches his plans, power, and understanding go up in smoke as the ineluctably calm Carnell pursues a cryptic game of chess in this clip from Kaldor City Story Four: Taren Capel.)

CD: (Laughs) That sounds like a sane approach to life… Are there other audio dramatists working today that you particularly admire?

AS: I think Rob Shearman is a very good writer. I think he’s an excellent writer.

CD: I would agree with that.

AS: And Daniel O’Mahony of course, and Jim Smith, and there are also several others I could name. Paul Dale Smith is a very clever chap, and Lawrence Miles is an excellent writer as well. I don’t often agree with Lawrence Miles, I’ve had several arguments with him, but never over his scripts.

CD: You’ve touched on this in your comments already, but could you sum up the state of your business?

AS: I’ve been told by other audio producers that there is a limited shelf life to their products. They produce a story, it comes out, and then after a few months it stops selling and they never sell any more. But I’ve never had that with Kaldor City, or Faction Paradox. They’ve sold solidly. Occam’s Razor came out in 2001 and I’m still selling it.

CD: Is that due to advertising or word of mouth?

AS: It must be word of mouth. Since Doctor Who’s come back it’s very difficult to get advertising anywhere in the Doctor Who media. They’re too busy reviewing the latest Cyberman-Voice-Changer-Helmet to find room for anything else. But it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I think the CDs sells because they’re good, and people recognize that. I’ve certainly been sent some lovely emails over the years, which is all very encouraging. I was expecting a drop in sales when Doctor Who came back on TV, but as Kaldor City and Faction Paradox are clearly spin-offs, then I suppose you have to be in a spin-off frame of mind anyway to buy them, so the return of Doctor Who hasn’t knocked our sales at all. They’ve all sold very well. In fact sales have gone up. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s my Faustian pact. I have this pact with Satan. He’s the one working on my sales promotion at the moment.

CD: I hope you made your Faustian pact in the tradition of Goethe rather than Marlowe. You know he gets off the hook in Goethe’s version?

AS: That’s right. He gets off the hook through the love of a good woman. I prefer bad women, myself. That’s probably why I’m doing Faction Paradox.

CD: Alan, thanks for talking with me today.

AS: A pleasure.

Today I present part one of the Malleus interview with Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, audio dramatist, writer, and producer of the Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox audio drama serials. In this installment, Stevens discusses what drew him to audio drama and how Magic Bullet came to be, why he recast the Faction Paradox audio dramas, and what makes sound designer Alistair Lock a genius. Alan has an engaging wit and an interesting approach, and the article is embedded with sound clips from both the Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox serials that illustrate why Magic Bullet is a force to be reckoned with in the British audio drama scene. Don’t pass this one by. 

(You can go directly to Magic Bullet’s website by clicking on their logo above. Further sound clips from The True History of Faction Paradox can be found in my overview of the series here. Part 2 of the interview can be found here.)

CD: How did Magic Bullet get started?

AS: It got started because I had an idea for an audio series loosely based on a film called Yojimbo. It was by Akira Kurosawa, and it was about this Samurai who had gone into a town and had set about playing two powerful families off against one another as a way to make a lot of money. It was remade by Sergio Leone into a Western called A Fistful of Dollars, with Clint Eastwood, and again into Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis but this time set in the 1930′s. And I thought, it worked as a Japanese samurai medieval film and it worked as a cowboy film and as a 30′s gangster flick, so I had this idea of an unnamed character, probably played by Paul Darrow, coming into a town or city and playing one side off against another. I had already done some not-for-profit Blake’s 7 audios, a drama-documentary called Travis: The Final Act and two plays, The Mark of Kane, and The Logic of Empire, with sound designer Alistair Lock, and Logic had starred Paul Darrow as Avon, so you can see the connections coming together; in fact a lot of the people who later appeared in Kaldor City originally worked with me on those audios.

Download audio file (kaldor_clip_1.mp3)

(Avon sets course for a fateful rendezvous with Blake in this excerpt from The Logic of Empire.)

At the same time that I was thinking about this, Chris Boucher released a Doctor Who book called Corpse Marker, which, as well as being a sequel to his 1977 Doctor Who story The Robots of Death, was also a Blake’s 7 / Doctor Who crossover, because Carnell from Blake’s 7 appeared in Kaldor City, where the story was set. So I called up Chris Boucher, and I said to him, would you be interested in doing a (audio drama) CD series called Kaldor City? And he said, “What’s your idea?” And I told him about the Yojimbo scenario, and he said “You go away and write a script, and if I like it we’ll proceed from there.”

Also at this time, Jim Smith had held a drunken conversation with Paul Ebbs from BBV about the possibility of doing an audio series with them, and he seemed to think BBV would be willing to do it, so I went away and wrote this script with Jim and came back to Chris, and he liked the script. But when we got back to BBV with the script and the cast we wanted, they weren’t too interested; I think they thought it would be too expensive. Big Finish then showed some interest, but eventually I thought, “why don’t I just do it myself?” So I set up my own company called Magic Bullet. The name Magic Bullet came about because my Blake’s 7 audios used to feature a variation of the Season 4 Blake’s 7 logo, which is a crosshairs, on the spines.

CD: So you weren’t just trying to profit from an American tragedy, then? (laughs)

AS: Well, as Kaldor City’s all about conspiracies, then that also kind of fits. So Kaldor City was a six-part series, and as I was coming towards the end of it, Lawrence Miles sent me an email saying “would you be interested in taking up Faction Paradox, because BBV don’t want to do it anymore?”  They’d produced six CDs beforehand. I’d heard of Faction Paradox, but I hadn’t ever read any of the books or listened to any of the audios. So I borrowed the audios from Daniel O’Mahoney, who I was working with at the time on the last Kaldor City, Storm Mine, and the books from my girlfriend Fiona Moore, and thought, I could work with this. So I got back to Lawrence and said “I’ll do Faction under the Magic Bullet label!”

Download audio file (01_-_Occams_Razor_Track_1.mp3)

(The opening track of Kaldor City 1: Occam’s Razor. Iago’s arrival, terse and sharp like the character himself, leads directly into the theme.)

CD: Before we proceed with Faction I want to talk a little bit more about Kaldor City. Small start-up companies usually begin with less ambitious, less expensive casts, less experienced sound designers, and even when they can afford top-quality people they usually have more kinks to work out learning the art of writing for audio. Occam’s Razor, the first Kaldor City release, was an extremely polished and professional work right off the bat, with a first rate cast, a tight script, a kicking theme tune, and one of Britain’s best sound designers in the person of Alistair Lock. To be blunt, how did you do it?

AS: Part of it was luck. I met Alistair Lock in 1986, and we’d worked together on Travis: The Final Act, The Mark of Kane, and The Logic of Empire, so obviously when I decided to do Occam’s Razor he was the first person I went to. I had the template of Yojimbo and Chris Boucher’s Corpse Marker book, so I knew the actors I needed to cast, and I already had casting connections from the three Blake’s 7 audios I’d done before. I knew Paul Darrow and got on with him, Trevor Cooper was in The Logic of Empire as well, and Brian Croucher and Peter Miles were in The Mark of Kane. I contacted Russell Hunter through a friend of mine who knew him, and I’d met Russell Hunter myself in 1990 at a convention. Carnell, played by Scott Fredericks in the Blake’s 7 episode Weapon, was difficult to track down, as he now lives in Ireland! I eventually got in touch with him through BBC Residuals, who kindly forwarded on to him a script and accompanying letter- thinking back, it was ridiculous, really, as I’d written a script with Carnell in before I’d even contacted the actor. It would have been a terrible mess if he’d decided not to do it! But he got back to me, “Yeah, sure, I love playing Carnell!” and he rang me up and was a very nice guy indeed. 

When you write a script, you write with specific actors in mind. I wrote Iago specifically for Paul Darrow, however, there were a few other people I had in mind if he couldn’t do it. One of them was Alexis Kanner from The Prisoner, I thought he was a fabulous actor. Though interestingly, in retrospect, I think Alexis Kanner wouldn’t have been a good choice because he was a bit too similar, vocally, to Scott Fredericks. But Paul Darrow agreed to do it full-stop, so I was quite lucky on cast.

I think the reason I had a good idea of how to write a script for radio was down to me being a big fan of Blake’s 7 when it came out, and I used to tape record the stories off the screen. This was before I got a video recorder. And because British television couldn’t afford splashy effects, it relied on plot and character and good dialogue, so effectively it did translate very well to audio. Especially if you’d watched the episode and then immediately listened to it, because then what was going on was cemented into your brain. Whereas, I remember there was one episode that I’d missed on first viewing, but my father taped it for me, called Power. Since I hadn’t seen it, I couldn’t always tell what was going on from the audio tape, so I think it kind of taught me unconsciously that certain kinds of visual information have to be communicated otherwise in audio.

And also, doing Travis: The Final Act was a great help. That effectively was going through Blake’s 7 and picking out the character Travis and how he developed and how he worked, and you would find very, very clever infodumps. There was a great scene in Star One where Servalan effectively tells the plot of what’s been happening up to that point to Durkim to refresh the audience. And it was so cleverly, so brilliantly done by Chris Boucher that you don’t realize it’s a huge infodump. So doing Travis: The Final Act really taught me how to write.

CD: How many scripts had you written before Occam’s Razor?

AS: Travis: The Final Act in a way was a script, because I had to amalgamate all these interviews and segues into a documentary. But the first drama I wrote was The Mark of Kane. So Occam’s Razor was my third proper dramatic script. 

CD: Big Finish productions recruit a lot of their script writers from people who work in other media – novels, for example. Some of them take to writing for audio right away, and some of them don’t.

AS: There’s an art to writing audio, as with writing for all media. I don’t know if I could write a novel. I’ve done guidebooks. I’ve written guidebooks to Blake’s 7 and The Prisoner with Fiona Moore, and we’re working on one for Battlestar Galactica now. 

CD: Did you learn to analyze stories through this fascination and hobby of yours, or were you pursuing this academically in college or graduate school?

AS: Not academically. If I’m interested in something I will move Heaven and Earth. If I really, really want to do something, then I will do it. If I’m not interested, you can’t make me. I didn’t learn to read until I was about nine years old. I was a late developer. The reason I learned to read was I discovered they were doing Doctor Who stories as novels. Doctor Who stories I’d never seen with Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell (the second and first actors to play the Doctor.) So I thought, “I like Doctor Who on T.V. and I want to know what these stories are about, so I will learn to read.” So I think if you’re really interested in something you can really push yourself and do it. 

I have an H.N.C. (Higher National Certificate) in radio production, but that came after. I was doing the Mark of Kane and I thought perhaps I should do a course, so I went on the course and I was doing more than they expected or the course required. So the qualification came after, it didn’t come before.

As for the reviewing, you’ve got to understand what a story’s about, so by reviewing an episode of Blake’s 7 or whatever, by deconstructing someone else’s work, you can actually see how it goes together and then hopefully do your own thing.

CD: I certainly understand what you mean by being motivated by passion. Let’s shift gears and talk about Faction Paradox. Could you give a brief description of Faction Paradox, and describe what the Magic Bullet Faction Paradox audios have to offer?

AS: Faction Paradox came about because Lawrence Miles wrote some Doctor Who novels for Virgin Books and the BBC, featuring them as characters. They’re a kind of time-travelling voodoo cult who cause a lot of trouble by creating paradoxes. At the start, they lived in the Eleven-Day Empire, the eleven days left over when England went on the Gregorian calendar. So it shouldn’t really exist, but it does exist, because they’re in there. It’s a paradox. It’s conceptually absurd, but it’s funny. Lawrence then spun it off into, among other things, an audio series for BBV where Faction gets wiped out by the Sontarans who are working with a character called Lolita. Two of the Faction survive: one of them’s called Justine, the other is Eliza. They go off and have loads of adventures. And in the series that I’m dealing with, they’re involved with the Egyptian god Sutekh, who appeared in the Doctor Who story, Pyramids of Mars.

(The enigmatic Sutekh, lurking in the shadows as only he can.)

CD: Sutekh is another name for the Egyptian god Set, correct?

AS: That’s right. If you do a completely original show, it won’t sell. Because people think, “What’s this? I’m not going to take a chance on this.” And even if it has got actors from Doctor Who it won’t really sell, because people think, “Well I want Sarah Sutton playing Nyssa, not Sarah Sutton playing Cathy, or whatever.” And so with Kaldor City I got Scott Fredericks back to play Carnell, and Russell Hunter to play Uvanov, and I sweated blood to get back Taren Capel himself, David Bailie. He’d actually given up acting and had only started up again just a few months before I contacted him, which was enormous luck. 

So I said, “What sort of hook have we got on this Faction?” And Lawrence said, “I’ve got an idea of bringing in Sutekh.” I said, “I’m glad you said that, because I actually know Gabriel Woolf, who played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars.” So I contacted Gabriel and asked him, and he said, “Yeah, I’ll come back as Sutekh.”

Download audio file (13_Track_13.mp3)

(Sutekh takes vengeance on the followers of his brother, Osiris, in this excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox vol. 4: Words from Nine Divinities.)

So a lot of it takes place with the Egyptian gods: Upuat, Anubis, Horus, and Sutekh, and it’s jolly fun. It’s political – Lawrence Miles really does think through his plots. He really, really knows his series – he’s a very coherent plotter. 

CD: The Osirians and the Egyptian mythology that Magic Bullet’s series brought in is a bit of a shift in emphasis from the earlier BBV releases. BBV would bring in Doctor Who related concepts and monsters – the Sontarans, the Peking Homunculi, the prison world patterned after Shada – for one chapter each. (Two CDs constituted a single unified chapter of the BBV releases.) Lawrence Miles is obviously more invested in the Egyptian mythology now, with Sutekh in particular becoming a major ongoing character for 6 CDs. Was this consciously decided to give the Magic Bullet audios a new identity?

AS: Lawrence Miles said to me that he’d always wanted to write a science fiction series based on the Egyptian pantheon since he’d been a kid. I think he saw Faction as a way of doing it. So he had an idea of doing a six-part series with Sutekh, and the various Faction characters also representing figures from Egyptian myth.

There were some changes from the BBV series. I didn’t use Nigel Fairs, who had originally produced the Faction audios. I have nothing against Nigel Fairs, it’s just that A: I didn’t know him, B: He was off to do Sapphire and Steel for Big Finish, and C: I had worked with Alistair Lock, and I couldn’t very well then turn to Alistair and say, “I’ll just go use Nigel.” Especially as we did the first two Factions back-to-back with the last Kaldor City, so it would have been quite expensive, not to say confusing, to have Nigel Fairs there with Alistair Lock: “You’re directing this bit, and you’re directing that.” Ridiculous.

The reason I recast the Faction audios was because if I wasn’t using Nigel, I didn’t feel that I could then poach his actors. We all have certain groups of actors we use again and again, and I observe that a number of the people who have appeared in the original Faction have appeared in Sapphire and Steel and other things Nigel’s done before and since. And also I wasn’t really very happy with this accent that the actress playing Justine had adopted. Because when I was asked to produce the show I went back and read the books, and Justine was this upper-class Victorian girl. And so I didn’t quite understand why she was talking with this Lancastrian accent. Lawrence Miles also wasn’t keen on it. He didn’t really have any involvement with the original CDs – he’d just send a script out and didn’t hear back until he got the CD. So there was a general feeling that the accent was wrong. So even if I did get the original actress back, I’d be saying “could you please change your performance?” So I just recast them. And some fans didn’t like it, but tough. (Laughs)

Truthfully, the last thing I wanted to do was annoy the Faction Paradox fans by recasting the entire series. I thought the best thing to do was minimalize the recasting as much as I could, and in fact I asked Lawrence if we could do the new audios with a completely new set of characters. But he said, “No. Justine and Eliza are going to be in it.” So we compromised, and left out a lot of the characters from the original BBV series, like Lord Sandwich and the transsexual French swordsman, swordswoman, whatever, but kept in Justine, Eliza and Lolita.

CD: In your FAQ, answering this question, you said you wanted to play to Magic Bullet’s strengths and style. What do you feel these are?

AS: One film I was very impressed with was Pulp Fiction, which effectively was a pulp gangster movie with some European art film snuck into it. I like that juxtaposition, and again, Blake’s 7 was also a kind of pulp show, but with some intelligent ideas behind it. I like action-adventure, but thoughtfully done and well worked out. I also like good dialogue and strong characters, and I think that’s what Kaldor City has, and it was these elements that also attracted me to Lawrence Miles’ work. 

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_3.mp3)

(In this audio clip from Occam’s Razor,Kaston Iago informs Stenton Rull that he is “not a patient man”.) 

And I also like a six-part story where you have time introduced into a show. For example, although The Caves of Androzani is one of the best Doctor Who adventures ever made, at the end of the story, Peri has all these terrible weeping sores on her legs. And the next episode they’ve all gone and she might as well not have been dragged through caves by a deformed maniac while suffering from spectrox toxemia. Because the reset button has been pressed. I’m never a big fan of the reset button. So I think after story one, story two has to reflect what has happened in story one, and the characters have to reflect that as well. The BBV series had self-contained two part releases, whereas our series is a six-part story, and characters come and characters go, but the ripples of what has happened run strongly through it all. Does this make sense?

CD: Yes, it does.

AS: You explain it to me then, so I can find out what I’m talking about.

CD: Generally I would say you have an affection (which I share) for the pulp serial, but mature ones in which the characters evolve over time. There’s some extraordinary examples of this in current German audio drama, Gabriel Burns being a notable example. I think in a way it’s generational. You have children who were brought up in the 1970s on these British TV shows or German audio tape dramas or American comic books, and now those children have grown up and still want to follow those stories and characters, or those types of characters, but on a more sophisticated level. 

AS: I think that the reason British TV in the 60s and 70s had strong characterization and strong plotting and clever writing was because they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on elaborate effects, and so that’s the kind of stuff that appeals to me. A 50 minute T.V. script is about 5,000 words long. A 50 minute radio script is about 11 to 12,000 words long. Because you can’t do chase sequences very well on audio, you have to fill up the space with talk. So it fits in perfectly with what I like – I like strong characterisation, good dramatic dialogue and intriguing plots, so audio is perfect for me, because that’s all you can really do on it. There’s a scene in Kaldor City: Checkmate where Blayes goes back and has a shoot-out with Iago. If I’d been doing that as a T.V. production, or a film, I would have done it as a huge Scarface-style shoot-out, with security forces storming the house and Iago fighting them off with automatic weapons and all that stuff, but that wouldn’t transfer to audio. It’s a good idea not to have more than two or three characters in a scene, because it can be very confusing for the audience. You’ve got to be more intimate and clever when you’re writing for audio.

CD: For me the purest example of this from your work is a small piece, Kaldor City: The Prisoner, featuring Iago and Landerchild that you did for MJTV’s The Actor Speaks 4: Paul Darrow. It’s just a philosophical discussion, and it’s carried entirely through the dialogue and the actors’ intensity and it’s absolutely compelling. But basically it’s two people talking in a room.

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_2.mp3)

(The Actor Speaks vol. 4: Paul Darrow, featuring an original short Kaldor City play, The Prisoner, by Alan Stevens. Click the image above to visit the MJTV website.)

AS: Yeah, I said to Mark, “How many actors have I got?” And he said, “Well, two.”

CD: (Laughs)

AS: Of course, there was a lot of stuff in the news at the time about the Abu Ghraib interrogations, so I thought I’d explore that. But also, in the Chris Boucher Doctor Who story,Image of the Fendahl, there’s some quite interesting stuff in there about how we all know the world is round, but in the old days they believed it was flat and they acted as if it was. I remember there was an old lady I saw years and years ago, and she was losing it a bit, and she was convinced that there was a well outside in the garden. And there was no well there, but the people who were looking after her told me there was a well back in 1937. Do you see what I’m getting at?

CD: Yes, interesting. These things have a conceptual life.

AS: That’s right. So I was basically extrapolating from Image of the Fendahl and The Robots of Death when I wrote The Prisoner. And also I had to fill up 20 minutes. (laughs)

CD: Were you able to record the casts ensemble?

AS: In Faction, from episodes three onwards, the actress who plays Justine and the actress who plays Eliza don’t meet. They were recorded several weeks apart. It’s only through Alastair’s skill as an editor that they appear to be in the same room talking to one another. Also, Chris Tranchell never appeared with any of the characters he talks to, he was recorded separately in a different studio. Neither did Peter Halliday. 

CD: Were the Kaldor episodes also recorded like this?

AS: Well, it varies. For instance, Russell Hunter was available on the same days as Scott Fredericks in Occam’s Razor and in Death’s Head, but Paul Darrow was not. But when Russell came back for the next three, Scott Fredericks wasn’t available on the same days he was available, but Paul Darrow was. So in the first two stories, Russell Hunter was in the same studio reacting back for all the scenes he does with Scott Fredericks, but not with Paul Darrow, and for the next three, it was the opposite. 

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_6.mp3)

(Paul Darrow (Iago) and Russell Hunter (Uvanov) recorded together. This scene is from from Kaldor City vol. 3: Hidden Persuaders.)

Download audio file (Kaldor_clip_replacement.mp3)

(Paul Darrow (Iago) and Russell Hunter (Uvanov) recorded separately and mixed together later by Alistair Lock. This scene is from Kaldor City vol. 2: Death’s Head.)

The fact is you’re following a script, and there’s only a certain way you can do most lines, plus, you have to have good stage directions, so you don’t have someone whispering “we’ve got to go over there, now” and his companion saying “OK MATE, I’ll FOLLOW YOU!” You’ve got to make sure that the stage directions are clear and you know what you’re doing. But as long as you direct it right, you can tie it all up together. And also, another good thing about audio is that if you have a performance which is poor you can cut it right out. There were a couple performances in the past where someone’s come in and done something and I’ve just thought, “that wasn’t very good at all”, and we just snipped them out and replaced them with another actor. In fact, if you have an actor and he does two or three takes, you can take a line from the first take and put it with another line from the second take, and then can carry on with the rest of the third take. Apparently on another production Alistair was working on, an actress mispronounced a word. And he and William Johnston were able to edit it so that she pronounced it correctly. Alistair himself pronounced a “sh” noise and when it was edited in it just sounded perfect. There’s a lot of great stuff you can do with audio.

CD: It surprises me that you recorded Kaldor in this way, because you had really wonderful chemistry between the actors, and yet they weren’t actually in the same room all the time.

AS: It’s scripts, you see. If an actor knows the character they’re playing, and they’re directed as to what the previous person said or how they said it, then there’s only a particular way you can say a certain line. For example, on one day we got Brian Croucher and Trevor Cooper together, and we recorded all of their lines for three CDs, with me reading in the lines for the missing actors. It’s always a good idea to do CDs back-to-back, you see, it saves a lot of money. Occam’s Razor and Death’s Head were done back-to-back, and Hidden Persuaders, Taren Capel, and Checkmate were all done back-to-back. So on one day we’d record all the scenes involving one set of actors, and on the next, another set of actors. Also, you never do any recordings in scene order, it’s just too time-consuming. It’s not unusual, Big Finish do the same thing as well.

CD: Yes, I know.

AS: Although to be honest, I think they nicked the idea off me (laughs). But it’s very very helpful, because to get all of those actors in the studio on the same day is a logistical nightmare. It really frees stuff up, because you can have someone come in next Tuesday and do it, as opposed to having to be there on the day Philip Madoc is there. Because they’re actors who are working all the time, you’d be very lucky to get them all available on the same day. Alistair Lock is a genius really, a lot of artistry goes into it.

CD: I’ve long been impressed with his work.

AS: I’ve got a good ear for edits. When I listen to other productions, I can often hear if a breath has been edited or cut short. But I can’t hear edits in Alistair Lock’s stuff – it’s seamless, his partner William Johnston does a brilliant job on the dialogue edits. And Alistair’s very very careful about levels, meticulously goes through them and makes sure everything is balanced. He sweats blood literally over it. I’m enormously lucky to have just met him by chance in Cardiff in 1986. 

CD: There’s a richness to the soundscapes he does. They have a kind of aural texture and density that is often lacking in the work of other designers. Two different moments that impressed me were the scene with the sun god Ra, a living Sun inside the Ship of a Billion Years, where he somehow communicates the sun’s immensity and ambient power. In Kaldor City, I was always struck by how carefully he constructed the explosion of the company central building in Taren Capel. People often use a single large “boom!” to represent a building exploding, but that isn’t usually how it happens – different parts give out at different moments, setting off other areas in a series of smaller bangs that crescendo.

Download audio file (23_Kaldor_City_Clip_7.mp3)

Getting back to the Faction, you keep saying Magic Bullet’s Faction Paradox line is a six-part Faction Paradox series. Are more planned after that?

AS: It’s written as a six-part series, there are currently no plans to continue it beyond that.

CD: So the two you’re releasing this year are the finale?

AS: Yeah. Retailers told me when I ended Kaldor, “you’re insane, why don’t you do more?”  And I replied, “well, it’s a six-part series and now it’s finished. There isn’t any more to say.” In fact, people sent scripts in for Kaldor City 7; Fiona and I even wrote Kaldor City 7 ourselves, and then threw it away, because it just proved to us that the show had come to a natural end with Storm Mine.

There’s this good film called Candyman by Clive Barker. It was a hit, and so the studio insisted on doing a sequel. There should never have been a Candyman 2.

CD: (Laughs)

AS: There was even a Candyman 3, and someone on the internet was saying, “Please, God, no more!” I think every story has its course to run, and if you continue beyond its natural end, it will become just a vague, hollow shell of itself. In the last episode of Blake’s 7 there was a huge great shoot-out and they were all killed, and that was it. As much as people protested and asked for the show to come back, it never did, and I think that was absolutely the right decision, because effectively the programme had run its course. And as far as I’m concerned, the Faction storyline concerning the Egyptian gods will have run its course by episode six. 

CD: Ever since the first release, the Eleven-Day Empire by BBV, this has been the story of Eliza and Justine. Justine in particular seems to be the Joan-of-Arc heroine who ties it all together. Is this the end of their story as well, or will it continue in other media?

AS: I can’t tell you that because it would spoil the end.

CD: (Laughs) Fair enough. Is this the end then of Magic Bullet, or do you have other productions in mind?

AS: I have no idea. Magic Bullet was formed to do this six-part Kaldor City series. And Faction Paradox came about simply because BBV no longer produce audios, and Lawrence contacted me. So if within the next nine or ten months someone comes along and says, “Hey, I’ve got this really good idea for a series!” and I look at it and think, “Yeah, okay, I’ll go with that”, then that’s what I’ll be doing next. 

Lots of people approach me for series. But I only do what I want to do. I’m not in it for the money; if a series breaks even, I’m happy. Sometimes you’ve got an itch and you need to scratch it. It may cause me a great deal of effort and stress, but I have to do it. And that was Kaldor City. And the Faction series, I was really taken with it and wanted to go with it. And Lawrence himself really, really wanted to do this. I think the audience appreciates that. I think they can tell when something’s done with a lot of love, really. Lawrence certainly writes these scripts with a great deal of love and I think that comes over.

Next time: In part two of this interview, Stevens talks frankly about the commercial imperatives and creative opportunities of working with licensed properties, comments on the similarities and differences between Paul Darrow’s Avon and Iago, and explains why you should never trust authority figures. 

This week I’m pleased to post my interview with Nigel Fairs, who cast, directed, composed and mixed the Faction Paradox Protocols published by BBV. Many know Nigel from his work on the Sapphire and Steel and Tomorrow People audio drama serials from Big Finish productions. In this interview Nigel gives a good-humored, at times surprisingly frank account of his work on the first Faction Paradox audio series. You can learn more about Nigel Fairs at his website.

How did you get into audio drama in the first place?

NF: I’ve been making audio drama since I was about 5 or 6. The very first one I made was called ‘The Green Ghost’ and starred me, my grandmother and my teddy bear (which I voiced). When I was about 11 I started bullying my school-friends into making ‘radio serials’ (some sci fi, some kitchen sink dramas) – two of these poor friends (Linda and Chris) ended up being in the FPs – and carried on making those whilst I was at drama school. When I was a full-time actor I was asked to be involved with the Audio Visuals company (run by Bill Baggs and Gary Russell) which is how I met them, and worked with them professionally later.

Do you listen to audio drama as a pastime as well as a vocation? Are there creators in the field whose work you find particularly inspiring or challenging?

NF: I always have Radio 4 on, yes, so I do hear the odd play and am an avid fan of ‘The Archers’. I’ve had to stop the car on occasions because a scene has reduced me to tears. There was a particularly vivid rape scene a few years back which I think is probably one of the most disturbing pieces of audio drama I’ve ever heard. In my teens I loved listening to a late night adventure serial, I forget what it was called but it started with a gunshot. And later on there was a wonderful fantasy serial called ‘Hordes of the Things’ which I think starred Frank Middlemass (?) and had a magnificent theme tune.

How did the Faction Paradox Protocols series come to be at BBV, and how did you come to be involved?

NF: I’ve no idea how they appeared at BBV I’m afraid – you’ll have to ask Bill that – but, having edited audio drama for about 25 years by then I was keen to do some for Bill and he gave me ‘Faction Paradox’ as an “audition” of sorts. To be honest I had no idea what they were about, really – I’m not a huge sci fi fan and I had NO IDEA they were all about the Time Lords etc (though of course I recognised the Sontarans and tried to do an impersonation of the brilliant actor who played Lynx for the first two). But I thought they were well-written and quirky audio dramas. Sadly the first couple overran and Bill decided we should cut quite a lot of my favourite sections (all of which are on cd somewhere); mostly character monologues which gave them a bit of style, made them stand out I think. But he was the producer and it was his choice, quite rightly, to push the story on.

You wore many hats for the BBV Faction Paradox protocols, directing, casting, acting, composing music, and doing sound design. While this may have been a budgetary necessity, it also gave you carte blanche to put your stamp on the Faction Paradox universe. What was your vision for the series?

NF: To be honest, it wasn’t my vision at all, that was the scriptwriter’s. I used to get the scripts and try to make them good pieces of audio drama. And yes, the budgets were tiny, so that’s why I got to do all the work once Bill and the writer had finished the scripting process!!

Do you have a favorite “hat“? Do you think of yourself primarily as an actor, director, writer, composer, etc?

NF: That’s an interesting question. I think I probably think of myself as a creative person who can turn his hand to all of those things. When I’m doing any particular job I tend to give 100% to it, whichever hat I’m wearing…which can be exhausting, particularly if you’re also cooking lunch for the cast at the same time!

Let‘s take a closer look at your many roles:

Sound design: Lawrence Miles gave you highly visual ideas to convey with sound. How did you decide what a talking tattoo would sound like, or a lethal shadow-weapon? Can you describe how you created the iconic sound of the “sombras que corta“ (shadows that cut), the Faction‘s trademark armament?

NF: Oh crumbs. At the time I was doing FP, I had VERY limited equipment and effects, so I was literally hitting things and twiddling knobs and seeing what they sounded like! The shadow weapons were me bashing an oven tray and a frying pan together and then putting a reverse echo on it!!!! As for the talking tattoo, was that in one of the later ones, the one set on a prison planet? I think that was just me turning the treble up to make the voice sound tinny and small!! The scripts were very very filmic, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I thought the best thing about them was the character interaction and the overall character storylines. But that interests me more than monsters and space battles anyway!

Music: You also composed the Faction theme music, a witchy mix of harpsichord and calliope. What inspired this sombre-yet-playful tune? It underwent a few iterations over the course of the series, ranging from soft-rock to a later dirge rendition. What occasioned the changes?

NF: I changed the theme because nobody liked the original version!! I think Lawrence thought it sounded too jolly, which, on reflection, is quite right. I think, because of the quirky nature of the monologues and Ellis Pike’s character (Morloch?) in the first episodes, I thought it was meant to be a ‘Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’-style thing. I mean all that stuff with the swearing witch woman and the Sontarans and the Servalan-type character was all a bit camp!! Of course I later understood that it was meant to be darker than that and tried to change the music accordingly.

My favourite score was for the last two. It was all based round a piece of classical music that was written in the year the flashback (to Justine’s childhood) was set. I remember a bit I was really pleased with when the girls were romping in the fields at the beginning. And also another cue at the end – by then I’d understood that the whole thing was meant to be a sweeping epic and intended to slowly take the style and scores into more filmic territory (like I eventually tried to do with ‘The Tomorrow People’).

Casting: I have the impression that BBV budgets for casting were limited, as casts were small and there were fewer “big-name” stars relative to similar productions from Big Finish and Magic Bullet. However, the casting for the series was effective, with engaging leads and solid performances from even minor characters such as mad King George (Eric MacLennan) and Mary Culver (Jackie Skarvellis). Did you hold auditions for the roles, or were the casts of the Protocols drawn from actors you had worked with before?

NF: There was hardly any casting budget at all. I had to rope in friends I’d worked with in the theatre, promising them that though the money was rubbish I’d cook them a nice lunch and we’d have a drink afterwards! Eric had been my assistant director when I ran a youth theatre in Kent and Jackie had done two or three of my plays in the Brighton Festival. She’s bonkers, a real eccentric lady. I did hold some auditions alongside a theatre play I was casting, which was how I found Suzanne, whom I’ve worked with many times since, and Emma. Both of whom are adorable, and were very enthusiastic about the whole project, though neither of them could pronounce ‘Sontaran’.

On a personal note, I was particularly taken with Ellis Pike‘s performance as Godfather Morlock and Suzanne Proctor‘s as Justine. Any news of what these actors are doing now?

NF: I directed Suzanne in a theatre production about a terrorist suspect last year. She’s fantastic. I think she’s just done some telly and is expecting her second baby sometime soon. She also sings in a brilliant trio. Ellis I haven’t seen for a while, though I know he does quite a bit of theatre. I’m told he also plays the Prince Regent sometimes at Brighton Pavilion! I originally worked with him in the actors’ company at MOMI back in the early nineties.

Direction: This may be more of a compliment than a question, but in reading Lawrence Miles‘s character notes in the scripts, I was struck by how closely the actors realized the nuances of their roles. For example, Miles wrote of the Demetra Kine character from Movers:

Demetra Kine. The villainess of the piece, although she’s not a villain in the sneering, sadistic sense of the term (i.e. she’s not like Lolita from the previous Volumes). Demetra is quiet, controlled, determined and most of all professional: she comes from a culture in which assassination’s an everyday event and empire-building’s a way of life, so as a leading member of a self-made semi-aristocratic family she knows about being clinical and detached. Actually you could say she’s a lot like Michael Corleone, but in fact the closest historical parallel is probably Lucretia Borgia. She always speaks in a slow, measured fashion, and what’s most notable is that she’s always so reasonable, even when the things she’s saying seem bizarre or unacceptable. The underlying sense is that she might, if treated properly, be an ally instead of an enemy.

Kate Dyson did such a superb job that I was getting that “underlying sense“ long before I read this description. While giving Kate her due, you consistently got solid performances from your actors that were faithful to Miles‘s scripts and subtle character notes. In audio drama, with the pressures of limited studio time and often no rehearsals, what do you find effective directing comes down to?

NF: Kate is a superb actress and she was also in the terrorist play I directed last year. Always a pleasure to work with, and a fascinating lady who does a lot of work for human rights. 

Effective direction ALWAYS comes down to casting. If you cast the right person who knows how to do their job, then you’re laughing; they do it!? I always say that the most important part of the studio day is the twenty minutes at the beginning, when everyone’s sitting around having a coffee. That’s when I get to suss how each actor works and relates to each other. It’s invaluable time; my job is to put them at their ease and ensure that a professional working atmosphere is created. This applies to theatre work as well of course.

Acting: You had a few supporting, enjoyable character roles in the Protocols series: Lord Ruthven, an effete time-lord (and reference to Polidori’s Byronic vampire?), and General Kine, a bull-headed yet somehow sympathetic Sontaran officer. After the first two episodes you were largely absent from the casts until the fifth release, where you had a brief walk-on role as the unnamed Reverend. After a notable presence in the first two stories, did you deliberately recuse yourself from the casts?

NF: Not at all!! Again it was a budgetary decision. In the second and third cds there were fewer characters so we could afford to use that number of actors. In the first and last couple we couldn’t so I had to fill in!! I really enjoyed playing the Sontaran, though it was all in post production, as was Lord R. I can’t remember who read it in on the day. Suzanne probably!!

Do you have a favorite Faction Paradox Protocols release?

NF: I liked the middle two the best I think. I loved all those gambling scenes and the clockwork robot things. I think I’d settled down a bit by then and had a bit more of an idea of what I was supposed to be doing. I was pleased with the score – a lot of harpsichord I think, and a Chinesey-kind of theme for the robots. And the cast was wonderful, we laughed such a lot recording that one. Saul Jaffe and Jo Castleton in particular are terrible gigglers. My cat was in it too!!

You‘ve come a long way as an audio drama producer and director since your days at BBV. Looking back at the Faction Paradox Protocols series, what are you most proud of? What would you do differently if you could?

NF: It would have been nice to have recorded it in a proper studio rather than in my bedroom! I can’t bear to listen to them now really, as the quality of dialogue recording is so poor. But they were invaluable to me as far as experience went and I really enjoyed the scripts, I thought they were very different. I’d love to have known what happened next, and had something to do with them, but I understand Alistair Lock did a superb job, so that’s brilliant. I used him several times on ‘Sapphire and Steel’ and love his work.

Magic Bullet‘s later Faction series took a dramatically different stylistic direction. Have you heard any of them? What do you think of them?

NF: Alistair did give me the first one but I’m sorry to say I haven’t listened to it. It’s really difficult hearing someone else make a better job of something you put your heart and soul into with limited money, equipment and resources! But when I was listening to the final edit of one of Alistair’s ‘Sapphire and Steel’s he did play me an excerpt and I thought it sounded brilliant. So I’m glad it has an ongoing life.

So far you have mostly been associated with licensed properties in audio drama, such as Faction Paradox (BBV), Sapphire and Steel, the Tomorrow People, and Dr. Who (Big Finish productions). Do you have any interest in writing or producing original audio drama stories or properties? Or do you believe this is financially impractical for commercial audio drama in the UK today (as Magic Bullet producer Alan Stevens does)?

NF: Oh my goodness OF COURSE I’d rather be producing original drama!! It’s very frustrating indeed being tied to the various limitations of ‘licensed properties’. I think possibly my takes on the ‘Tomorrow People’ and ‘Sapphire and Steel’ series were a little radical for some people – straying too far from the original series for them, maybe – but my main interest lies in making good quality drama and working with talented people. It can be VERY frustrating when you’ve sweated blood and tears over these things and they get dismissed as “rubbish” by people who don’t share your vision; it really hurts, which, if I’m honest, is one of the reasons I’m stepping away from the medium at the moment. Too much pain for too little money!!

I’m working on several original projects at the moment, and also a novel, none of which are paying much, if anything, but are very, very fulfilling creatively.

Generally speaking, with the worldwide economy experiencing a downturn, do you see the British (or larger English speaking) market for commercial audio drama holding steady, growing, or shrinking?

NF: I’ve no idea I’m afraid! I know that in times of recession, ‘feel-good’ drama becomes more popular, so I’m hoping that good theatre will flourish, and good drama with it.

What‘s up next for Nigel Fairs in the world of audio drama? What would you like to do that you haven‘t yet had the opportunity to do? Any dream projects?

NF: My dream project is to write and perform in a theatre two-hander with Lou Jameson. I’ve learnt so much from her as a performer over the years. We’ve had an idea, but that won’t happen until other things have happened (that I can’t talk about!! Listen to me being all mysterious!).

I have another ambition, which is to hear a piece of music I’ve composed being played by an orchestra. If I ever win a vast amount of money I’m going to try to make that happen! But at the moment it’s a pipe dream.

As for audio, I’m enjoying doing post production on the ‘Dark Shadows’ series at the moment, particularly composing the music; it’s all very ‘Interview with a Vampire’, very atmospheric. And I’ve also enjoyed my work on the Dr Who Companion Chronicles, I wouldn’t mind doing a few more of them. 

My biggest regret is that I never got to finish the ‘Tomorrow People’ series – I had a two year story arc set up and the series got cancelled halfway through, which broke my heart. Especially as I met the creator of the original series (which I so loved as a kid) last year and he said I’d done a better job than he had!! I don’t believe it but what a compliment!!

Welcome to the Malleus critical overview of the Faction Paradox audio drama serials, The Faction Paradox Protocols (BBV) and The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet). Before we discuss the Faction’s past, let’s take a brief glimpse at its future. Courtesy of Alan Stevens and Magic Bullet, I’m honored to present the web premiere of this exclusive clip from The True History of Faction Paradox #5: Ozymandias.

Download audio file (01_Osirian_Charm.mp3)

Guided by a recurring vision and a fragment of poetry, two adventurers take the first steps onto a journey which will lead them to an alien world of nightmarish architecture, insect civilisations and strange women who are much more than they seem…

For on this planet, a tribunal is assembling– a tribunal which will decide the final contest between Horus and Sutekh, and with it, the fate not only of the Osirian Court and Faction Paradox, but of the universe itself.

Click below for more clips from the entire Faction Paradox range, and a frank look at a fascinating and uncompromising science fantasy series unlike anything you’ve heard.

BBV’s Faction Paradox Protocols and Magic Bullet’s True History of Faction Paradox are not light fare. If you’re looking for another stale George Lucas / Joseph Campbell “hero’s journey” or a reductive morality play a la Star Trek, you’d do better going to the local cinema. Let’s not mince words: as charming as they can be, neither of these famous franchises will ever produce anything nearly as smart as The Book of the War. If on the other hand you get a mental rush from fascinating ideas, lush soundscapes, and layered characters, then you are absolutely in the right place. The Faction Paradox audio drama serials published by BBV and Magic Bullet are complex, flawed, difficult, inspired, and well worth your time.

I hope this essay will be of use to Doctor Who fans, but Faction Paradox is just too provocative and too good to be confined to Who fandom any longer. Accordingly, you won’t need any foreknowledge to follow this argument, and what little foreknowledge you require to enjoy the audios I intend to provide here. Although there is some critique, this is less a review than a commentary on the two serials. It’s lengthy, so for user-friendliness I’ve divided it into three parts. Part one provides the basics: the backstory, the central characters, and important themes. Part two makes the case for why the series is worth your time, arguing that it has considerable ashe, prana, funk, chi – whatever you want to call that elusive spark of life that “commercial spin-offs” aren’t supposed to have. Part 3 looks frankly at the strengths and weaknesses of the two Faction Paradox serials. Courtesy of BBV and Magic Bullet productions, I will be illustrating my comments with audio clips from both the Protocols and True History releases.

Part one: What is Faction Paradox?

Faction Paradox is a darkly playful science fantasy universe developed by Lawrence Miles, with contributions from other authors. It currently encompasses several novels, an abortive comic book series, and two linked audio drama serials, The Faction Paradox Protocols (BBV) and its successor, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet).

If this sounds overwhelming, don’t despair: the audio dramas are the most grounded and accessible of the Faction Paradox offerings. Rather than a tangent, the audio drama serials constitute the (more or less) linear narrative spine of Faction mythos. That narrative is driven by two capable, intelligent, and dangerous women – Cousin Eliza and Cousin Justine. We’ll return to them in a moment.

Faction Paradox writ large is about the nature of time, or rather, having intellectual fun with the nature of time. In Faction mythology a race of technologically advanced beings organized into Great Houses imposed a new temporal reality on the universe. They anchored Time itself in a lineal chain and set themselves up as its overseers. By using timeships (Tardises), the members of these Great Houses (Time Lords) could travel through time and space to anywhere and anywhen. Strict protocols were imposed to govern what, when, and where they could exert influence, so their construct of Time would not be endangered. Essentially, the Houses established themselves as temporal technocracies.

These Houses are currently embroiled in a War with an unknown Enemy, a war that takes place in and through time itself. As Miles puts it, the conflict is ultimately between “Cause” and “Effect”. The whole thing smacks more than a little of postmodern critiques of how the West constructs ideas of progress and history, only in this case those critiques have been weaponized. The Houses, pressured by the Enemy, are forced into new alliances and even genetic unions with “lesser” (non time travelling) races. Basically, the unchanging Houses are being forced by the War to adapt in ways beyond their ability to predict or control. As they say in Akira Kurosawa’s epic film Kashemuga, “the mountain has moved.”

Download audio file (Lord_Mortega_and_the_War_King_discuss_politics.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Lord Mortega and the War King, military leader of the Great Houses, discuss Lolita and the state of the War. An excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox #3: Body Politic.)

Faction Paradox, a fallen House, is a third party. Anarchic, playful, and unpredictable, the Faction revels in violating the codes of other Houses, hence their fallen status. The War between the Great Houses and the Enemy impacts and influences the Faction’s activities, but rather than choose a side they play the powers against one another to their own advantage.

Just as the Doctor in Doctor Who or Ellegua in Yoruba mythology are trickster figures, Faction Paradox is a trickster society. (The fact that tricksters, by definition, do not belong to societies is one of the many paradoxes this series delights in.) Not surprisingly eccentrics of every stamp swell the Faction’s ranks, but Doctor Who fans should not expect a nation of Doctor clones. For one thing, the Doctor’s heroic moral code is not in much evidence, and while the Faction do help people on occasion, they do so out of self-interest. They also hurt and kill others out of self-interest. Miles substitutes a grey moral web for the Doctor Who T.V. show’s “twinkle-in-the-eye” magical optimism. (And arguably, for its “twinkle-in-the-eye” patriarchalism.) Listeners are never allowed to commit to the Faction characters carelessly or entirely.

The shadow of the Doctor does touch the Faction scripts. Unconventionally brilliant, droll, and outlandish mentor figures recur throughout the series. In the Protocols, Godfather Morlock and Mary Culver fulfill this function, while in the True History, Egyptian Gods Anubis and Upuat do. None of them have the selfless heroism or youthful brio of the Doctor, masking their nobler acts with wry humor or affected detachment. If anything, the problem is not that they resemble the Doctor too much, but rather each other.

The biggest departure from the Doctor archetype, however, are the heroines of the series. The Faction Paradox audio dramas focus on three characters: protagonists Cousin Justine and Cousin Eliza, and their enigmatic nemesis, Lolita. Lawrence Miles describes them in his character notes for The Eleven-Day Empire:

Cousin Justine. Main protagonist. Faction Paradox recruit. Young, probably early twenties. Recruited from nineteenth-century England, and it shows. Polite. Demure. Tends to be overly formal, and therefore an unusual candidate for a time-travelling voodoo cult. Probably quite uncertain about her new role in life. Nineteenth-century upringing means that she’s ashamed and embarrassed by the fact that she comes from a family of witches, even though it’s the reason the Faction’s interested in her. Actually capable of being quite aggressive, but only when she’s sure of what she’s doing. At the moment, she isn’t.

Cousin Eliza. Another twentysomething Faction recruit. Born and raised in the twentieth century, so more relaxed than Justine (but probably just as messed-up). London girl. Closer to Justine than anyone else, although that isn’t saying much. Seems to have very little faith in the Faction’s methods. Goes along with them anyway. Unwilling to risk stepping out of line, despite a noticeable cynical streak.

Lolita. Villainess. Aristocratic, but with no respect for tradition. Dangerous. Utterly amoral. Apparently in her thirties (though she’s not human, so her actual age is open to debate). Political. Manipulative. Believes herself to be superior to most other life in the universe – as it turns out, there’s a good reason for this – and regards everybody else with quiet amusement. Hard to imagine her taking anything seriously: everything she does is pre-planned, and therefore there’s never any reason for concern. Gives the impression of being “untrustworthy” rather than “slimy”. Doesn’t really care one way or another.

The conflict between these three characters centers around Lolita’s quest to extinguish Faction Paradox, and the odyssey Justine and Eliza undertake to redeem or avenge it.

What’s Lolita’s motivation? Much of the fun of Faction Paradox is putting together the pieces for yourself. However, some pieces of the plot – Lolita most of all – are arguably missing or incomplete if you have no background in Doctor Who lore. For those without that knowledge, I offer my take on Lolita below. For those who want to discover it for themselves, skip down to “SPOILERS OFF”. (And keep in mind, I may be entirely wrong.)

“SPOILERS ON”

Lolita’s goal, it seems to me, is attaining the ultimate conflation of being and time. It is never explicitly stated, but Lolita is a sentient timeship. If a Time Lord is a person who can use a timeship to travel through time, a sentient timeship that can travel through time and space of its own volition is an evolutionary advance. Not content with that, Lolita wants to take it a step further: becoming time and space, attaining complete temporal and spatial omnipresence. Becoming sentient history, if you will.

BUTE: You talk of history as if it were a thing?

LOLITA: Well, of course I do. I’m going to be one, when I grow up. Myself and all my bloodline.

- from In the Year of the Cat, The Faction Paradox Protocols IV

The fusion of genetics and time is a running theme in the Faction Paradox audio dramas, most notably in the concept of biodata. Biodata encompasses not only a person’s genetic code, but their entire historical timeline. A person with an incomplete genetic code will have potentially lethal physical deformities; a person with incomplete biodata will fade in and out of existence throughout their lifetime.

“SPOILERS OFF”

For reasons not yet given, Lolita has determined that only Faction Paradox could upset her grand ambition. Her first attack isolates and exiles Cousins Justine and Eliza, sending them on an odyssey of self-preservation, salvation, and revenge.

Justine, a young “Cousin” (low-ranking Faction initiate), is forced by Lolita’s actions to quickly evolve from foundling to Joan-of-Arc style messiah figure. These audio dramas are ultimately her story. Eliza, introduced as a foil to Justine’s mysticism, has functioned mainly as a cynical Sancho Panza / Dr. Watson commentator. She’s been our anchor in the Faction universe, providing a grounded perspective even as Justine becomes more driven and remote.

Neither Justine or Eliza are very emotive characters, but they draw you in just the same. Justine’s uncertainty and air of innocence makes her sympathetic when she first appears, while the indomitable sense of purpose she develops lends her a magnetic quality later. Eliza’s world-weary, almost slacker perspective is laced with an enjoyable mix of humor and pragmatism. Although “messiah” fits Justine pretty well, it isn’t easy to use the word “hero” to describe either her or Eliza. In fact, Justine and Eliza’s antagonists frequently display more of the raw human feeling that we associate with “goodness”.

Download audio file (09__O.K._Bring_Her_Down…_.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Eliza tortures the Malakh soldier, Jalal, to coerce information from his commander, Merytra (Isla Blair). An excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox #2: The Ship of a Billion Years.)

Lawrence Miles has made Justine and Eliza associates of convenience rather than friends or rivals, and their emotional reserve towards others extends to their own relationship. Miles seems to prefer noncommittal ambiguity to overwrought hero/sidekick cliches. This tactic has kept Justine’s and Eliza’s ultimate roles in the saga – even their ultimate dispositions towards each other – hard to predict. It has also rendered their relationship inert, at least until very recently. Justine and Eliza’s most colorful interactions typically occur not with each other but with supporting characters. Only in the latest Magic Bullet episode, Words from Nine Divinities, has the status quo between Justine and Eliza shifted dramatically.

Part two: An artistically vital “spin-off”

Faction Paradox is time-traveling science fantasy with a dark, intellectual edge. It is also a “Doctor Who spin-off”. “Science fantasy with a dark, intellectual edge” sounds generic and the word “spin-off” carries the unfortunate (but often true) connotation that a work is aesthetically derivative and / or moribund. And this is where Faction Paradox is exceptional, making it worth my time and yours: it is uniquely, vibrantly alive.

I can defend the uniqueness of Faction Paradox, on a superficial level, in terms of simple mathematics. Miles brings at least five times as much new material to the table as he borrows from Doctor Who. To take one example, consider the sombras que corta (“the shadows that cut”), the Faction’s unique weaponry. These are living shadows, able to act independently from the bodies they are attached to. Every Faction agent’s shadow is bonded with a specific weapon, a weapon that the agent’s actual body does not carry. Thus even while physically unarmed, Faction agents can wield their shadows with lethal swiftness. This conceit is interesting enough. But Miles isn’t content to let the idea go as a simple sci-fi fetish, and through Justine in particular, takes it much further:

Download audio file (Godfather_Morlock_and_Justine_deal_with_a_bomb.mp3)

(Audio clip: Cousin Justine and Godfather Morlock attempt to defuse a Sontaran bomb in a tensely wrought moment from The Faction Paradox Protocols #1: The Eleven-Day Empire.)

There is of course a larger question at stake, in terms of Faction Paradox’s claim to genuine artistic life, than its “spin-off” relationship to Doctor Who. Namely, does it work as effective drama, or is it just more clever sci-fi claptrap? I admit it feels strange to be typing this essay so soon after Fred Greenhalgh’s wonderful interview with Crazy Dog’s Roger Gregg, whose approach and style seem almost antithetical to the notion of commercial art as art. Gregg’s work strikes me as Dionysian in the best sense, celebratory, fecund, erotic, generative and unpredictable. He brings a wild energy to his plays that, by comparison, makes the grey deadness of most commercial dramas all the more apparent. In short, Gregg seems like all you could wish for in an artist’s artist, a bacchic saxophonist.

To borrow further from Nietzsche and Paglia, Lawrence Miles’s work is in many ways textbook Apollonian: intricately plotted, classically controlled, and almost mathematically poised. Eros? There isn’t any. The only love you’ll find in the Faction Paradox audios is maternal, paternal, or platonic. And the author’s work, like (I suspect) his life, is saturated with a geek’s love of the fantastic and its eruptions in popular culture. Miles is probably less concerned with challenging the boundaries of what we consider dramatic art than he is with challenging the canon of British science fiction.

Yet the effect of Miles’s surfeit of Apollonian control is very much the domain of the Greek god of wine: intoxication. His blend of the meticulous and the phantasmagoric places Miles within the literary tradition of intellectual fantasists like Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. Like them, Miles goes well beyond the boundaries of genre with playful explorations of the nature of time, narrative, and being. Consider the inventively absurd notions of using a “tracking knife” to slice into a corpse’s personal timeline or looking through Big Ben’s clock face to dissect a battle in progress.

Download audio file (Cousin_Eliza_and_Godfather_Morlock_discuss_the_ongoing_assault.mp3)

(Audio clip: Cousin Eliza and Godfather Morlock discuss the ongoing Sontaran attack on their home in The Faction Paradox Protocols #1: The Eleven-Day Empire.)

Miles is very much representative of what comic book writer and journalist Steven Grant calls the British school of “mad ideas,” the origins of which Grant traces to 60′s new wave science fiction. Miles’s scripts are dense with ingenious, absurdist inventions, some of which advance the plot, many of which are just there to delight and provoke the mind. This is, in my opinion, his greatest strength as a writer and the best reason to check out these audio dramas. Faction Paradox succeeds most because it is fascinating and entertaining to think about.

If I have one complaint about Miles’s scriptwriting, it is that he doesn’t unleash his wildest conceptual experiments in his audio dramas nearly as much as he does in his books. It would be fascinating, for example, to hear what “a weapon that can rewrite history” sounds like, and how it impacts the way the story is told. Miles, Stevens, and Lock certainly have the talent to pull it off. But beyond a few tantalizing moments here and there, Miles opted to keep the narrative structure of his audio dramas predominantly linear. This traditional approach certainly helps make the audio dramas accessible, and I can’t fault Miles for wanting to do that. However, in a series that is largely about questioning the nature of history and narrative it still feels like a missed opportunity. (In our upcoming interview, Alan Stevens hints that we may see this change dramatically in the final releases.)

Part 3: A Tale of Two Audio Serials

So you’re intrigued. Now comes the loaded question: where should you start? If you want the whole story, start with BBV’s The Eleven-Day Empire. But is that the best answer? Let’s look more closely at the continuities and differences between the two serials.

BBV: The Faction Paradox Protocols

The first 6 Faction Paradox audio dramas were released by BBV under the Protocols line. These plays were directed by Nigel Fairs and featured Suzanne Proctor as Cousin Justine, Emma Kilbey as Cousin Eliza, and Caroline Burns-Cook as Lolita. The episodes were released in pairs, so that every two CDs delivered a complete chapter of the ongoing story. They are:

The Eleven-Day Empire / The Shadow Play: The story of Lolita’s first attack and Justine’s rite-of-passage, set in the Faction’s home territory (the titular Eleven-Day Empire). The Sontarans, a militaristic race of clones from numerous Doctor Who episodes, are featured.

Sabbath Dei / In the Year of the Cat: Justine and Eliza visit London in 1762, becoming embroiled in court politics, the Star Chamber, the Hellfire Club, and Lolita’s more than royal ambitions. The Peking Homunculi from the Doctor Who serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang are featured.

Movers / A Labyrinth of Histories: Eliza attempts to rescue Justine from a prison world of the Great Houses, and Justine experiences flashbacks of her first encounter with the Faction. The prison world is very likely a take on Shada from the unfinished Tom Baker story from Doctor Who, Shada.

Each 2-cd chapter has a different historical setting, period style, and cast of supporting characters. Only Justine, Eliza, and Lolita appear in all three chapters. Each chapter also incorporates an element of Doctor Who lore to draw fans: Sontarans in the first pair, Peking Homunculi in the second, and a thinly-veiled Shada in the third. The Protocols were discontinued prematurely in 2004 when BBV shelved its entire audio drama line.

The BBV productions were diamonds in the rough. The scripts were written to Miles’s usual high standard, with innovative concepts, dry wit, and an epic scope. Nigel Fairs, who cast, directed, and scored the dramas, threw himself into his work. With a few minor exceptions, the cast was strong and gave inspired performances.

Why then diamonds “in the rough”? Fairs was working with limited means, which had audible consequences for the series. Since his budget did not allow for casting established stars, Fairs drew primarily on emerging talents. Budget pressure also kept casts small and necessitated double-casting.

That said, good casting doesn’t require stars, it requires the right people in the right roles. With few exceptions, that’s what Fairs got. I want to make special mention of Suzanne Proctor and Emma Kilbey, who originated the roles of Cousin Justine and Cousin Eliza. Proctor played both sides of Justine’s personality – the self-doubting acolyte and the driven messiah – with grit and intelligence. More than anyone else, it was Proctor’s performance that first riveted me to the series and kept me coming back. Some have contested the appropriateness of Proctor’s accent (a beautiful Lancastrian lilt) to the role of a 19th century witch. As an American, I confess I have no idea of how fitting Proctor’s accent was for the role. What I can say is that both Proctor’s voice and accent carried a bewitching folk flavor that really suited Justine. I have to confess I was completely smitten. I’m happily married to my soulmate, a Thai woman from exotic New Jersey. But in my next life, let me wed a Lancastrian.

Download audio file (05_Eliza_meets_the_Faction_for_the_first_time.mp3)

(Audio clip: Eliza encounters Godfather Morlock and Faction Paradox for the first time while on a youthful ramble with her friend in rural England. An excerpt from The Faction Paradox Protocols #5: Movers.)

Emma Kilbey arguably had the harder task in bringing Eliza to life. A “straight man” supporting character whose primary role is to provide the listeners a foothold in a strange world, Eliza’s narrative purpose often threatens to overwhelm her dramatic potential. Kilbey avoided this by leavening Eliza’s scripted cynicism with savvy and world-weary gravitas.

Download audio file (02_Playing_For_Time.mp3)

(Audio clip: Eliza matches wits with the enigmatic Sabbath over a game of tarot cards. An excerpt from The Faction Paradox Protocols #3: Sabbath Dei.)

Other noteworthy performances included Ellis Pike as the meticulous, grandfatherly Godfather Morlock, an actor and a role that were pivotal in launching the audio dramas and contributed greatly to their arcane yet humous tone. I was very sorry to see both the actor and the role vanish from the series. Jackie Skarvellis is a hoot as Mary Culver, a saucy mix of extra-dimensional power, prophet, and salt-of-the-earth prostitute. And Kate Dyson’s calm, calculating Demetra Kein is a genuine antagonist to be reckoned with. The actor who surprised me most, however, was Saul Jaffe as Sabbath. Given the character’s enigmatic and imposing name, I was expecting an actor more along the lines of a Magic Bullet star: Gabriel Woolf or Philip Madoc, say; someone with an imposing, cultured, and deep voice. Jaffe’s voice is pitched high and youthful, but he gives Sabbath a thoughtful cunning that leaves you with little doubt as to who is the smartest man in the room. I began a doubter, but was completely won over by the end. A pleasant surprise, and another character I’m sorry to say has not been retained into the Magic Bullet run.

The roles I was least taken with were the double-cast ones. In the interest of full disclosure, while I recognize double-casting is often a financial necessity, as a listener I loathe it. In my experience, very few actors can disguise their voices to the point that they are unrecognizable. And unless you are doing comedy, where knowing the different voices are coming from one actor is part of the joke (a la many a Firesign Theatre or Monty Python sketch), it can really destroy the fourth wall. Emma Kilbey was called upon to voice both Eliza and Godmother Quelch in the first two BBV releases, which she carried off brilliantly on both counts. She was less successful playing Eliza’s aged Aunt Fiora in the last two BBV plays. For whatever reason, young women voicing old women, whether on the radio, T.V., or in the movies, never convince me. Having Linda Bartram play so many supporting roles with cartoonish dispositions (Shuncucker, the Lady / Annabel) also made the Faction Paradox universe seem that much smaller.

As the director / musician / sound designer, Nigel Fairs did more than anyone else to give the first Faction Paradox audios their distinctive sound. As a director, Fairs got rock solid performances from his players, keeping them closely in tune with Miles’s character descriptions. Fairs did play up the farcical elements of the first two BBV releases, The Eleven-Day Empire and The Shadow Play, more broadly than he would in the sequels. The reasons behind this will be detailed in my upcoming interview with Fairs, but the change in tone that followed was welcome.

As a musician, Fairs provided Faction Paradox with its most memorable theme, a haunting calliope / harpsichord melody that captures the series’ dark carnival feel. It too underwent some significant changes over the course of BBV’s 6 releases. I would agree with general opinion that the first soft-rock iteration wasn’t successful, but the somber dirge in the final two episodes remains, for me, the definitive Faction anthem. I like Alistair Lock’s theme for the Magic Bullet series, which calls up vistas of desert wasteland under alien skies. But as good as it is, Lock’s intro / outro music could just as easily be used for an episode of Stargate, or any other Egyptian-tinged sci-fi epic. There’s nothing particularly “Faction Paradox” specific about it, whereas Fairs’s witchy tune couldn’t be used for anything else.

Fairs’s sound work on this series isn’t flawless. Proctor and Kilbey overload their microphones while screaming in an Eleven Day Empire sequence. Lolita’s infant child sounds like a canned sound effect, since the same baby crying track is looped for every appearance. A woman says “Oh” in a background murmur loop from Sabbath Dei so loudly and regularly that anticipation of it becomes a form of Chinese water torture. Generally speaking, Fairs’s scenes never achieve the layered aural richness that gave Alistair Lock’s later work on the series such epic sweep. But as Frog-mouth said in ZBS productions’ Ruby 3, sometimes “low tech does the job”. What Fairs’s sound work lacked in polish it made up for in inspiration, and I mean that sincerely. His shadow weapon sound effects, created by reversing clanging kitchen pans, have more visceral bite than Lock’s synth versions. (Alan Stevens has since written to inform me that Lock’s shadow weapons effects are derived from the sound of a whip-crack.) His jangling Peking Homunculi, stirring like broken clockwork, are hilarious and eerie.

Download audio file (07_Verbal_Jousting.mp3)

(Audio clip: Justine uses her shadow weapon to dismantle a self-effacing yet self-assured Peking Homunculus that is doing its level best to kill her. An excerpt from The Faction Paradox Protocols #3: Sabbath Dei.)

Rough-hewn it may be, but Nigel Fairs’s sound work has real character, and in this respect it sometimes surpasses Lock’s. It is largely due to Fairs’s hard work and smart innovations that the Faction Paradox Protocols, for all their rough edges, still sound so compelling.

BBV’s Faction Paradox Protocols are not the slickest or most lavish productions. But there’s an undeniable spark to them, and while their delivery is a bit patchwork, their content is always effective and enjoyable. My recommendation would be not to skip them.

Magic Bullet: The True History of Faction Paradox

In 2004, Magic Bullet released their first entry in The True History of Faction Paradox, Coming to Dust. And there was great rejoicing. It hadn’t been at all clear that the audio dramas would continue in any form after BBV ceased production. I actually considered the possibility that Big Finish or Magic Bullet could pick up the series, and even suggested it on the old Outpost Gallifrey message boards. I never expected it to happen, though. We owe Alan Stevens a debt of thanks for taking a chance on the property and giving it a second life.

Although it followed on from the events of the first series and kept the Protocol’s “two CDs per chapter” format, the True History series was set up to stand on its own. So far the following chapters have been released:

Coming to Dust / The Ship of a Billion Years: British occultists summon Justine and Eliza to the Naples of 1763 to investigate a demonic Ape being exhibited there. They are soon swept up in a search for Faction Paradox genetic banks and into a confrontation with the Osirian court, a race of space-faring Egyptian gods. In the shadows, Sutekh (Set) is ready to strike . . .

Body Politic / Words from Nine Divinites: Sutekh claims the ship of Ra with disastrous consequences, Lolita expands her powerbase among the Great Houses, and Eliza lives the myth of Set and Osiris.

Ozymandias / ????: The forthcoming conclusion to the series, which Alan Stevens promises will be apocalyptic.

Whereas the Protocols were open-ended until cancellation, the True History is scripted to be a finite 6 CD series. As such it is less episodic in nature than the Protocols were, with its overarching villains and themes (Sutekh, Egyptian mythology, resurrection) remaining stable over the course of the 6 CDs rather than shifting every 2. Essentially the Magic Bullet series has taken an “Osirian turn”, with the space-faring race of Egyptian gods assuming an important ongoing role. If you are familiar with the classic myth of Set’s murder of his brother Osiris, you are in for a retelling like none you’ve heard before.

Download audio file (08__The_Door_Is_Opening…_.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Sutekh lays claim to what is rightfully his in The True History of Faction Paradox #2: The Ship of a Billion Years.)

The change of production house had significant consequences for the Faction Paradox audios. The most obvious one was the recasting of Justine (Wanda Opalinska), Eliza (Jane Lesley), and Lolita (Jet Tattersall), and the scuttling of nearly all other recurring characters from the BBV run. The reasons behind the recasting will be addressed by Alan Stevens in our upcoming interview. Here the point is qualitative – how did recasting impact the listener’s experience?

Hearing a new voice take on a familiar role always takes getting used to. There are two ways a director can approach the problem. 1. Cast people who sound as close as possible to the originals or 2. cast people who sound different, but capture the spirit of the character in their own way. To my mind, there is only one right answer to the problem. As Brandon Routh discovered in the ill-fated Superman Returns, portraying Superman in the manner of Christopher Reeve doesn’t recreate Reeve’s Superman or pay homage to it: it results in a not-quite Reeve’s Superman. (Routh am Reeve Bizarro!) As French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would say, “make maps, not tracings”, or create, don’t imitate. If the new actors playing Justine, Eliza, and Lolita were to succeed, they would have to do so on their own merit. Fortunately for us Alan Stevens recognized this, and he didn’t cast sound-alikes.

Wanda Opalinska brings a new level of steely poise to Justine. An actress with the uncanny ability to convey stature through her voice, Opalinska does full justice to the harder persona Justine has evolved into. She convinces from the moment you first hear her. Download audio file (08_Eliza_is_summoned.mp3)

(Audio clip: Cousin Justine, summoned by the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini, makes her debut in the True History of Faction Paradox #1: Coming to Dust.)

Given her later entry into the series, Opalinska does not have the opportunity to portray the younger, less assured Justine that Proctor originated. Justine has evolved beyond that phase, having already adopted the mantle of avenging angel. This is hardly Opalinska’s fault, but the fact remains that the older Justine just isn’t as accessible as her younger self. Despite Opalinska’s strong performance, I would find it difficult to care quite so much for Justine if I hadn’t heard Proctor portray her beginnings. Those who come into the True History without knowledge of The Eleven-Day Empire will also be at a loss to understand the source or meaning of Justine’s strange powers.

Where Opalinska quickly made Justine her own, Jane Lesley as Eliza grew on me more slowy. In Coming to Dust she lost the world-weariness that enriched Kilbey’s performance of the character, becoming more quippy sidekick than laconic narrative foil. In The Ship of a Billion Years, however, she enriched her portrayal of Eliza with some nice emotional nuance, after tragedy rendered the character more empathetic than she’d ever been. It wasn’t easy to go from Kilbey to Lesley, but now that I have, I do like where Lesley is taking the role.

Of the three characters, Jet Tattersall’s Lolita sounds and acts most like the original version (Caroline Burns-Cooke’s). Tattersall’s delivery is less arch and more lambent than Cooke’s, and so unaffected that any similarity of interpretation should be put down to synchronicity rather than mimicry. To be perfectly frank, I found her performance even more natural than the original actor’s. Only the most anal-retentive will be put-off by this particular recasting; others may not even notice it.

The move from BBV to Magic Bullet also resulted in noticeable qualitative changes. To get down to brass tacks, it’s evident that the True History worked with a larger budget than the Protocols. Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet was in a position to hire a larger cast bolstered by many veterans of British sci-fi television. This lead to a number of memorable performances, particularly from actors with commanding baritones. Gabriel Woolf reprises his role as Sutekh from the Doctor Who classic, Pyramids of Mars, and his voice drips with all the old sibilant menace. Philip Madoc, another Who veteran, does a fine turn as the War King, a decadent schemer and tactician who finds himself out of his depth. Isla Blair (Ellainya / Merytra) gives an impassioned, surprisingly empathetic performance as the half-demonic leader of the ape-like Malakh. Peter Halliday’s Anubis effectively blends whimsy, scientific curiosity, and quiet dignity with a Jackal’s head. Julian Glover makes Upuat the Oscar Wilde of Egyptian mythology: gossipy, vain, fashionable, and witty. Peter Miles . . . but you get the idea. There’s really an embarrassment of riches here. None of these stars reinvent themselves, all playing character types they mastered long ago. But that mastery is very much in evidence. And if you don’t know these actors by name yet, you will realize why they are stars when you hear them.

One name I didn’t recognize but want to make special mention of is Patricia Merrick as Astarte Marne. This is a small role, defined by quiet defiance and fierce maternal longing. But although Astarte never so much as raises her voice, Merrick gives her an emotional weight even the gods of the series don’t possess. Performances like these impress on me all over again the care with which Magic Bullet puts their casts together.

It’s true that not every supporting role is outstanding. Francesco Calabretta’s (Don Escuro) frantic attempt at ethnic comic relief falls flat in Coming to Dust, and Chris Tranchell (Mortega), though gifted with a classically handsome voice, sounds more like a classically handsome BBC news announcer than a Time Lord in Body Politic and Words from Nine Divinities. Tranchell’s neutral baritone makes me feel like the play will be interrupted for a breaking story every time Mortega makes an appearance. But these are, I admit, minor quibbles.

Magic Bullet also brought greater sophistication to sound design in their Faction Paradox audios. Or rather, they brought in Alistair Lock, which is pretty much the same thing. Lock is one of the most accomplished sound designers ever to work in British commercial audio drama, and he is much beloved by connoisseurs for his early work at Big Finish. The phrase “cinema for the ears” gets abused quite a lot, but in terms of Alistair Lock’s work the term is apt. Lock brought a level of craftsmanship, nuance, and a sense of epic scale to the series that it hadn’t previously witnessed. When Lock conjures up a miniature sun at the heart of a spaceship, or has the winds of the desert force open the gates of the gods, you believe it. My favorite sound effect to spring from Lock’s mind, however, was the Royal telepathic speech of the Osirian court. Authoritative divine gibberish that flies past your ears like a dense stream of code, the effect is surprising when it hits you and weirdly credible.

Download audio file (05__Dont_You_Think_Cat-Heads_Are_So_Passe__.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Justine and Upuat attend the royal court of the Osirians in The True History of Faction Paradox #2: The Ship of a Billion Years.)

The result of Lock’s work is that the stakes seem higher, the scope broader, the threats more credible, and the tale more vivid than ever before. There is a majesty and richness to what Lock does that is hard to match.

In conclusion, you can certainly enjoy the True History, with its distinctive Egyptian stylings, impressive cast, and technical excellence, all on its own. It is the most impressive iteration of Faction Paradox on audio, and for pure professionalism I can recommend it without reservation. But I do have a weakness for the Protocols. The BBV releases are rougher, but what they lack in polish they make up for with imagination and verve.

Of course, this is a false problem. There is no reason to choose one series over the other. I strongly advise you to treat your ears and your mind to both.

Next week: An interview with Nigel Fairs, director / actor / sound designer / composer for the BBV Faction Paradox Protocols audio dramas.

Download audio file (01_Scene_One.mp3)

Audio track 1 from The Faction Paradox Protocols: The Eleven-Day Empire (the first episode of the first series) appears courtesy of Bill Baggs of BBV media, copyright 2001. Click the CD cover to go directly to the BBV website.

Download audio file (01_Chapter_One.mp3)

Audio Track 1 from The True History of Faction Paradox: Coming to Dust (the first episode of the second series) appears courtesy of Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, copyright 2005. Click the CD cover to go directly to the Magic Bullet website.

How to introduce Faction Paradox?

On the one hand it’s best to discover and unravel its mysteries yourself, on the other without some knowledge of its parent series, Dr. Who, you are at a disadvantage – one that a short field guide could easily remedy. Neither approach is entirely sufficient, so why not have both?

Today’s post is for the Romantics, detectives, and explorers. I’m reprinting Lawrence Miles’s “Faction Paradox – As Much as It’s Known”, an introduction which captures the cryptic poetry and subversive humor of the series. I’m also putting up the first tracks from each of the audio drama lines, BBV’s The Faction Paradox Protocols and Magic Bullet’s The True History of Faction Paradox. No context or backstory today – just let the opening lines engulf and enchant you the way only beginnings can, as in Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler.

Next week I’ll post a rough guide for the practically-minded. It will lay out some basic history of the series, highlight important themes, characters, and concepts, and comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the audio dramas. You can think of it as a thread leading you through Miles’s lexical labyrinth. Or if you’re not a fan of Theseus, you can think of it as a crude form of cheating.

(I will, however, try not to spoil major plot elements of the series.)

Later weeks will feature interviews with Nigel Fairs, director / composer / sound designer / actor for BBV’s The Faction Paradox Protocols, and Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, producer of The True History of Faction Paradox.

Finally, a brief primer on Dr. Who audio drama spin-offs can be found in last week’s post.

Now read on for series author Lawrence Miles’s introductory essay:

Faction Paradox, as Much as It’s Known

(Series introduction by Lawrence Miles, originally posted on the now-defunct Faction Paradox website, factionparadox.co.uk. Don’t link there – the domain has been taken by spammers.)

Reprinted with permission.

Primer for the Spiral Politic (Post-War Edition)

1: Faction Paradox

Era: Non-specific

Technology: Post-linear (subtle), time-active

It’s never easy, explaining Faction Paradox in a single line. It’s been described as a criminal syndicate, with agents operating in every civilisation from the first to the last; as an all-purpose guerrilla organisation, intent on overthrowing the order of history-in-general rather than any specific government; as a fetishistic death-cult, whose members remain utterly unaware of its founder’s true intentions; as a secret army, preparing for the day when it can launch a mass crusade against any other bloodline that stands in its way; even as a conspiracy of monsters, whose purpose is to stir up a War in Heaven and then pick over the ruins. And none of these descriptions are entirely untrue, although all of them fall short of the mark.

If the aims of this group/ cult/ organisation are vague, then at least its roots are well-known. The Faction started life as the bastard offspring of one of the Great Houses – the Houses being those aristocratic bloodlines which have, since long before the rise of the “lesser” species, seen it as their duty to oversee the structure of causality – and in human terms even describing the Houses is a challenge. To call the members of these bloodlines “another race” or “another species” seems to miss the point, somehow: the continuum has depended on their presence for so long that thinking of them as “just a different kind of people” is like thinking of gravity and entropy as different kinds of people. More than anything, the Great Houses have to be considered a force of nature, their roots intertwined with the roots of the Spiral Politic itself. And as for Faction Paradox- reviled and rejected by the other Houses, its members regarded as subhuman by beings who already regard humanity as beneath contempt, it’s hardly surprising that the “lesser” species should have such trouble trying to make sense its methods and principles.

Even before the outbreak of the ‘War in Heaven’, Faction Paradox was regarded as the most unpredictable (and opportunistic) of the time-active powers. Aware of the precarious nature of history – but under no obligation to protect it – while the other Great Houses were still attempting to uphold a ‘universal order’, the Faction was following its own, far more ambiguous, protocols. Ruthless, secretive and at times difficult to understand, it’s hardly surprising that the Faction should have eventually found itself under siege from its rival powers…In essence, though, this is how things stand. The Great Houses consider themselves to have jurisdiction over the length of linear time, to be above the “lesser” species in virtually every respect and to act according to age-old protocols which have very little to do with any human sense of morality. At its most basic level, Faction Paradox is the “fallen angel” among Houses, a cuckoo-bloodline whose purpose is to defy, corrupt and subvert the authority of the ruling elite wherever possible. So depending on whom you believe, this corruption is either a bold revolutionary statement or merely a way for the elders of the Faction to fulfil their own ambitions. Certainly, it’s undeniable that among the “lesser” species the Faction has a tendency to recruit the criminal, the dispossessed and even the insane- and has no qualms about this at all.

How much of the Faction’s work is actually meaningful, and how much of it is sheer posturing, remains unclear. The Great Houses believe themselves to be immortal: therefore the Faction surrounds itself with overblown death-imagery, dressing itself up in blood and bone in a manner that’s almost carnival-like, and all just to spite its opponents. The Great Houses believe themselves to be set above all other civilisations: therefore the Faction recruits its new members from the “lesser” species, committing the ultimate sacrilege by granting them equal status with the offspring of the pure bloodlines. The Great Houses believe themselves duty-bound to keep history neat, clean and linear: therefore the Faction aims to throw the whole of the continuum into a state of paradox.

Sometimes it seems as though the Faction’s simply playing a game, or perpetrating an enormous practical joke against the will of the Houses. Sometimes it seems as though the organisation’s just biding its time while its builds up its forces, ready for the day when it can launch its grand assault against the Houses and overthrow the protocols forever. The truth, if there is any, remains vague- and vagueness has always been the Faction’s area of expertise.

Hello everyone,

I’ve been gone for a long, long time, but I’m gearing up for a big comeback.

Over the next several weeks I will be running a series of articles on the strange history of the Faction Paradox audio dramas, featuring a critical overview of the series, transcribed interviews with directors, and audio excerpts. Faction Paradox isn’t a typical sci-fi audio serial. While it isn’t flawless or easy, however, it is as beguiling as it is bewildering. If working your way through a dense thicket of rich characters, intricate ideas, and surprising touches of genuine emotion sounds enticing, I highly recommend you tune in.

Faction Paradox originally started as a supporting player in the Dr. Who novel Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles. In later years, Miles would wean this anarchic, time-traveling voodoo cult / criminal organization away from its Dr. Who roots. Although Miles retained some concepts from the show under new names and auspices (the Time Lords became the Great Houses, timeships replaced Tardises, etc.) and reintroduced licensed villains (the Sontarans, Sutekh), Faction Paradox has since emerged as a genuinely unique and self-sustaining fictional creation.  Miles and other writers have advanced and expanded that creation through a line of novels, comics, and audio dramas.

The next several weeks will be devoted exclusively to the Faction Paradox audio dramas, but today I want to ground that in a brief primer on commercial Dr. Who audio drama spin-offs. In particular I want to introduce the “Big Three” spin-off companies to readers: BBV, Big Finish, and Magic Bullet. Again, this is just to provide a context for the articles that follow: it is not an exhaustive account. I will in all likelihood discuss these companies and their works in more depth later. 

The British television series Dr. Who is currently enjoying a renaissance on television. But before its rebirth it was off the air for well over a decade, and passionate Who fans were eager – even desperate – to consume the adventures of their hero in any form they could, be it books, comics, or yes, audio drama. Old series writers and new ones from fandom filled the television vaccuum with off-air stories, which they published however they could: through the Virgin or BBC book lines, via independent business ventures, or with zines or audio tapes circulated informally among friends. While there remain many amateur producers of Dr. Who audio drama, three British companies define(d) the scene with professional, licensed work featuring the original television actors: Big Finish, Magic Bullet, and the now defunct audio drama branch of BBV. (I don’t want to leave a snobby impression with this amateur / professional distinction. Both Big Finish and BBV had significant roots in the amateur fan audios produced under the “Audio Visuals” name. If there is one lesson for amateurs here, it is to persevere and hone your craft. Amateur work can be the foundation of later professional careers.)

BBV was the first of the three companies to market Dr. Who inspired audio dramas. Coming on the scene as a producer of Dr. Who-related fan films in 1991, BBV primarily focused on producing sci-fi adventure videos starring Dr. Who analogues and monsters. BBV began publishing audio drama spin-offs in 1998 and continued until 2004. As with the films, BBV’s Audio Adventures in Time and Space line consisted mostly of serials starring thinly-veiled analogues of the Doctor (The Stranger, The Professor, The Dominie) and his companion or of one-off adventures featuring popular Dr. Who monsters. BBV audio productions were often on the raw side, with variable success in sound design and casting. At their best, they had a crazy energy and a darker tone than the show that inspired them.

Big Finish locked up the actual Dr. Who license and began publishing official Dr. Who adventures with the original series actors in 1999. They are easily the largest of the three operations, producing 12 new mainline Doctor Who releases every year (starring the original Doctor actors) and numerous spin-off series, as well as serials derived from other t.v. properties like Dark Shadows, Stargate, Sapphire and Steel, and the Tomorrow People. Although small by book publishing standards, they may well be the largest privately owned producer of new, full-cast / full-script audio drama in the world. (Although there are probably a couple of German companies that could challenge that.) I will be covering their productions at a later date. Big Finish keeps a remarkable standard of quality considering the amount of work they publish per year, and their best efforts are classics. The relentless pace of production and the variety of hands working on each release means that there have been a fair share of lukewarm releases as well, and probably of necessity a “House style” has developed that, while solid enough, could stand some creative shaking up.

Magic Bullet established itself in 2000 as a small, sporadic boutique publisher of audio drama of the highest standard – the old cliche “quality, not quantity” applies here. Instead of focusing on the entire parent Dr. Who series, their line coalesced around a small corner of it: the characters, settings and concepts from Dr. Who / Blake’s 7 series writer Chris Boucher, particularly his classic Tom Baker arc, The Robots of Death and the later book sequel, Corpse Marker. Their impressive Kaldor City audio drama serial blended Blake’s 7 and The Robots of Death to create a dark future manipulated by intriguing bastards. There have been some mind-twisting releases, but as yet no duds from Magic Bullet. They just don’t do shoddy work.

Still another company, Cosmic Hobo, came on the scene in 2006 with their supernatural serial,The Scarifiers. The Scarifiers has no connection to Dr. Who content, but as with the productions mentioned above uses actors from the television show to lure fans. In this case Nicholas Courtney (Detective Inspector Lionheart, the Brigadier on Dr. Who) and Terry Molloy (Professor Edward Dunning, Davros on Dr. Who) create an endearingly quirky, gentlemanly atmosphere. These good-humored Lovecraftian serials are best listened to in an attic on a rainy night, but in pleasant company with comfy chairs, good tea, biscuits, toast and jam.

If you are already a Dr. Who fan, you most likely are already aware of these companies. (And if not, have at them!) If you aren’t a fan, you might dismiss anything Dr. Who-related out of hand. But the notion that Dr. Who is inherently second-tier on any level – creative, technical, or performance – is ill-considered. There are few ghost stories as well-crafted and haunting as Rob Shearman’s The Chimes of Midnight or as funny, moving, and horrific as the archetypal Shakespearean nightmare at the center of his The Holy Terror. I have yet to hear or read any circular narrative as compelling as Jonathan Morris’s existential black comedy, Flip Flop, an inventive 2 CD story that can be listened to in either CD order. No American audio sci-fi serial is smarter, slicker, or meaner than Kaldor City. While some match him, there are no sound designers in American audio drama superior to Alistair Locke. That’s no slight; he’s just that good.

Yes, many Dr. Who audio releases are flaccid and uninspired. This is true of anything. But many other works in the genre demonstrate intelligence, passion and creativity that can’t be denied. 

Faction Paradox boasts plenty of all three. Do you need to be a Dr. Who fan to appreciate it? It definitely helps, but if you invest a little time in it, I’d say no. Tune in next week for a series overview and sample tracks that will allow you to judge for yourself.

8 out of 10

A literate literary patricide.

Written by Joe Hill

Read by Stephen Lang

Published by HarperAudio, February 13, 2007

9 CDs, 11 hours and 6 minutes.

Availability: in print.

Language: English

“Hell is talk radio – and family.”

Joe Hill’s debut novel Heart-Shaped Box is accomplished, polished, and hauntingly familiar. Although a malevolent ghost stalks the hero, a more powerful shade looms over the author: his father, Stephen King. I approached Heart-Shaped Box with sympathetic curiosity: how do you forge your own path when you’re the son of the world’s most famous horror writer’ Well, you might try and write something King wouldn’t or couldn’t, like a comic book (Hill has) or an academic work of history (hasn’t). (Hey Joe, I don’t think King ever wrote an original audio drama . . .)

Or if you’re Joe Hill, you could stare down the master of the Dark Tower and beat him at his own game. You might even do it with a story about rebellion against powerful, over-reaching fathers. Perhaps Joe Hill deserves to have his work critiqued without reference to his father’s oeuvre; perhaps he doesn’t. I’ll leave that question to others wiser than me. For better or worse, this longstanding King reader can’t ignore the connection. Guess that means I’m haunted too.

Heart-Shaped Box relates the tale of one Judas Coyne, an aging, jaded heavy-metal rock star. Coyne is an appealingly gruff misanthrope. He’s as contemptuous of his poor upbringing (son of a pig farmer) and his sycophantic public as Gene Simmons or Ozzy Osbourne, but not nearly as ostentatious. It’s impossible to imagine the reclusive Coyne creating a reality show about his life, because unlike those real-life rockers he’s never had a family. Childless, the once-married Coyne has gone through a succession of young goth lovers whom he refuses to call by name, labeling them by home state. The story revolves around two: current flame Georgia (Mary Beth), and Florida (Anna), who committed suicide after a break-up with Coyne.

Like a raven with a disinterested interest in glittering trash, Coyne keeps a collection of macabre items as trappings for his Heavy Metal nest. He owns the skull of a medieval peasant, trepanned to release the demons inside, the signed confession of a witch, and a snuff film, among other things. The story opens when Coyne’s assistant Danny brings his attention to an online auction for a ghost embodied in an old suit. Intrigued and compelled, Coyne orders it on the spot. The suit arrives – you guessed it – in a black heart-shaped box. It is soon revealed that the ghost is quite real, and that Coyne’s purchase was part of a diabolic revenge plot involving his deceased lover. Now he and his friends are stalked by the spirit of Anna’s grandfather Craddock McDermott, a former soldier, hypnotist, and dowser who mesmerizes with his glittering razor.

Stephen Lang reads Hill’s words at a measured pace with gray baritone gravitas. He gives Jude a dead seriousness and terse growl that mask the rocker’s conflicted affection for others, and invests his supernatural opponent Craddock with a Southern lilt that glides from courtly to craven. Craddock is so well realized in all his moods and cadences that the audio springs to life whenever he manifests. Lang’s female characters are sometimes interchangeable, but read with an empathetic conviction that makes you forget you’re listening to a low-voiced man. As a narrator Lang supplies the frankness Hill’s economic text requires, leavening it with a hint of foreboding. Between them, Hill and Lang paint a landscape that is overcast, introspective, and raw.

There is much of Hill’s father in the text. True, Randall Flagg doesn’t flit through these pages, Craddock doesn’t have hands without lines on the palms, and familiar King catch phrases like ‘you don’t get to win’ and ‘that’s not in the script’ are mercifully absent. But the Southern villain does strongly recall the politely murderous, implacable John Shooter of King’s Secret Window, Secret Garden, scribbles over the eyes are kissing cousins to palms without lines, rock and roll references abound, and evil once again boils down to inexplicable meanness for its own sake. In King stories, the most frightening motive is not to have one, and here too we never really find out what drives McDermott to his crimes. Most significantly but hardest to describe, Hill’s style of wrapping personal with actual demons betrays his bloodline.

The similarities between father and son are so strong it sometimes feels like King might have written this book. That is, on his best day. The young Hill is a better wordsmith and craftsman than his veteran father. Much better. King seems to write novels on the fly, burning up pages with feverish imagination, letting tales take him where they will. This often gives his novels a freshness, as if both reader and writer are discovering the story for the first time. But spur-of-the-moment invention doesn’t always lead to great resolutions, and King’s endings fail spectacularly as often as they succeed, trailing a welter of unresolved plot points behind them. (Ever read Gerald’s Game or The Tommyknockers, or even the finale of Dark Tower‘ Don’t. Hell, even King himself advises you not to read the final pages of Dark Tower.)

Hill writes with deliberation and poetic economy, wasting nothing. There is not a phrase or idea in this book that doesn’t serve his larger narrative purpose. This makes for a tighter read than Hill’s more prolific father usually provides. It also gives his characters more substance and weight. Many of King’s characters never shed the taint of stereotype – even his most famous creation, Roland Deschain, is more idea than person. Hill begins with stereotypes (disaffected aging rockstar, overeager flunky, lost and depressed goth girl) and builds genuine people upon their foundation.

Finally, Hill has that rare gift of putting subtle sensations into words that you wouldn’t think could be articulated. He surprises you, as great authors like Italo Calvino or Herman Melville do, by aptly describing things we’ve all felt or thought but never thought about. Hill is no Calvino or Melville yet, but the gift is surely there. Here too, he has already surpassed King.

Hill’s debut novel may well have been his own heart-shaped gift to his father. It carries a poison promise: I can do your craft, your genre, and even your own style better than you. But sons become fathers, and Hill should take care that this box doesn’t become his own coffin. (‘Heart-Shaped Coffin’ was Kurt Cobain’s original title for the Nirvana song that gives this book its name.) He has revealed by doing that King’s style is a formula that can be learned and mastered. Done once and done well, that is a fascinating achievement. Done again and again, it will make Hill rich. But like all successful formulas, it comes at a price: confinement.

I’d like to think that Hill has laid his father’s shade to rest by invoking its voice so eloquently. In his next novel, I hope Hill will find his own.

Greetings all,

My wife recently had surgery for appendicitis, and between doing my work, taking care of her, and looking after my 4 year old son, I’m just too beat to write from scratch this week. My essay on Gordon Bok’s “Peter Kagan and the Wind” will therefore be postponed to next week. However, I’m not too tired to type up someone else’s words, so today I’m proud to present a lost piece of radio drama history.

After my review of his dramatic adaptation of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” went up, Erik Bauersfeld sent me a thoughtful and fascinating email response. Noting my interest in his cooperative 1984 Hörspiel USA project between Berkeley, California Pacifica station KPFA and German station WDR Köln, Mr. Bauersfeld kindly volunteered to send me information about it. The envelope he sent contained a 1984 copy of the KPFA’s Folio, which included summaries of all the Hörspiel USA dramas and an introductory article by Bauersfeld himself.

This was, of course, much too interesting to just file away. I contacted Bauersfeld and requested his permission to post his essay here, which he generously granted. Together with the show summaries, it presents a window onto a fascinating and all-too-brief bridge between the worlds of American radio drama and German Hörspiel. The dramas showcase an impressive level of dramatic invention and intellectual caliber, demonstrating philosophical depth and artistic boldness. While I share Bauersfeld’s regret that this international cross-pollination was cut short all too quickly, these nine broadcasts alone are an impressive accomplishment. They deserve wider recognition, and more than that, re-release.

I want to make it clear from the outset that this article only reprints Bauersfeld’s essay and the show summaries from the KPFA Folio issue. The words that follow are not my own, and I do not claim them. Furthermore, this post does not contain audio files of any of the actual shows. I only wish it did, as I’m dying to hear them myself. Nevertheless, I encourage any audio drama enthusiast to read on, and audio drama producers even more so. The ideas packed into these shows are rich, fertile, and inspiring, demonstrating even today how much further the artistic boundaries of audio drama can be pushed.

Again, my deepest gratitude to Erik Bauersfeld for allowing me to reprint his words and bring attention to this intriguing chapter of radio drama history.

The Project
by Erik Bauersfeld

Hörspiel USA all began when Robert Goss sent me his translation of a radio play about Helen of Troy written by Wolfgang Hildesheimer, with a note about doing it on KPFA. Hildesheimer is a distinguished Swiss writer, known for his radio work, novels, criticisms, and plays . . . but it was a long script, and I took months getting to it. But it took only minutes after reading the first several pages to get Robert on the phone. Of course, I told him, we must do it. But, I added, not as an amateur production with no funds for actors, directors or technicians.

The next day, I called the Goethe Institute in San Francisco and spoke to Ernst Schuermann. Talking over lunch, he told me he thought the Institute would be interested in funding the play. “But what about a series of Hörspiel instead of one play?” he suggested. And from there the project took off.

Robert Goss went to Köln, Germany, and then spent several months at Westdeutscher Rundfunk listening to over 90 Hörspiele and selecting thirty to choose from. Following that, I received an invitation by the Goethe Institute and WDR to visit radio stations in Berlin, Munich and Köln. It was at WDR Köln, with Paul Schultes, Klaus Schöning and Klaus Mehrlönder that the project was designed.

After that, we sent a series of applications to the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for additional funds. In addition, WDR became interested in sending several of their directors to San Francisco to assist in the productions of works which they had originally directed. This resulted in two co-productions, Five-Man Humanity and Monologue, Terry Jo. In turn, WDR became interested in finding and commissioning writers and other radio artists in the San Francisco area for productions at WDR, Köln. At least half a dozen such commissions have already resulted. Thus began a major international exchange of radio art between WDR Köln and KPFA, the former’s first such project with American broadcasting.

The result of all this, our first series, Hörspiel USA will be broadcast on KPFA this month. Nine programs, ninety minutes each; six works translated and produced here in Berkeley (at Fantasy Studios) and six original WDR productions: in all, twelve Hörspiel never before heard in the United States.

During the two years of preparation, Ernst Schuermann was transferred to Munich where he now heads the main office of the Goethe Institute. He continues to support the project. Dr. Manfred Triesch, the new director of San Francisco’s Goethe Institute, has brought his own ideas, encouragement, and assistance to the project. At the Institute Library, a center is being developed for Hörspiel works: tapes of our own productions, plus a large collection of original WDR productions are available, as well as scripts and publications. Plans for a continuation of Hörspiel USA this coming year – with emphasis on the exchange of radio artists – are already underway.

Another development has had consequences of more national importance to those of us interested in radio drama – audiences and artists alike. With the coming of television and commercialism in broadcasting in this country, radio drama, which began so impressively, was literally wiped out. But in Europe it continued to develop into a fine art, ranging from the most accessible to the most experimental. For the first time, the United States was represented at the International Geneva Conference of Radio Drama. Four radio artists, Everett Frost of WGH, Boston; Yuri Rasovsky, from Chicago; Dean Boal from National Public Radio; and myself all attended. This, too, was an outcome of our project, through the efforts of Ernst Schuermann at the Goethe Institute and Dr. Schultes and Klaus Schöning at WDR. This extraordinary gathering of radio drama artists culminated with a recommendation by the European Broadcasting Union to our government for increased financial support for radio drama in this country.

Thus, a “regional, national, and international bridge of connections,” to use Klaus Schöning’s phrase, has been set up for the development and exchange of radio art. And even more: these developments and our current series have given KPFA an international status, as Charles Amirkhanian, our Music Director, already has throughout Europe for his artistry in sound poetry and contemporary music. During this past year, three programs were produced and broadcast by Klaus Schöning at WDR Köln on our work here at KPFA. Unlike in this country, radio is reviewed daily in the newspapers of Europe, and our work was fully and enthusiastically reported.

Erik Bauersfeld is director of the KPFA Drama and Literature Department.

Here ends Bauersfeld’s article. I’m attaching the original Broadcast schedule for Hörspiel USA below.

Broadcast Schedule, October 1984

Program One, Mon. Oct. 1, 8:00 pm

During October, KPFA, in association with Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (West German Radio, Cologne) presents a series of nine programs to introduce our audience to the art of Hörspiel. this project, initiated by by funding from the Goethe Institute of San Francisco, and later by the National Endowment for the Arts, includes six classic Hörspiele, translated and produced Berkeley, and six original WDR productions. Two of the works in the series were co-produced by WDR Köln and KPFA (see article, page 1). Kalus Schöning, Dramaturg and producer at WDR Köln, was largely responsible for the development of this project, and on this first program, in conversation with Project Director Erik Bauersfeld, he discusses the art of Hörspiel in West Germany with many examples from its history, before and after the Nazi occupation of German radio. The program will follow with two complete works:

Hörspiel: An Introduction by Klaus Schöning. (WDR Köln production)

Five Man Humanity by Ernst Jandl & Friederike Mayröcker (produced in English)

Translated and directed by Robert Goss in consultation with Klaus Mehrlönder, director of the original WDR production. The two directors introduce the work with a discussion of its meaning and its production here at WDR. This brief work (17 minutes) is a classic in the WDR repertory, becoming in recent years a favorite with school children. Sound poets Jandl and Mayröcker have combined their abstract acoustical art with the cogent theme of militarization. In a Mother Goose-style, five men are born, grow up, educated, conscripted, imprisoned, tried, executed, and born again. The Bay area cast includes Leo Downey, Jack Shearer, Sigrid Wurschmidt, Jude Haukom, Craig Bray, David Frank, Steve LeGrand, Wallace Gorell, David Parr, Tyson Thomas, Ethan Eubanks, Jeffrey Johnson, and Daniel Goss. The work was produced at Fantasy Studios with technical production by Danny Kopelson.

Wind and Sea by Peter Handke (original WDR production)

Handke is one of the most prominent European writers and has produced several Hörspiel. In this brief and largely acoustical work, Handke directed and contributed the sounds of his own breathing. This original WDR production is introduced with a discussion by Klaus Schöning and Erik Bauersfeld.

Program Two, Sun. Oct. 7, 8:30 pm

The First Casualty of the Trojen War by Wolfgang Hildesheimer (produced in English).

Translated and directed by Robert Goss. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, one of Europe’s most prominent authors, has written many dramas for radio. Historically, he is one of the earliest writers for radio, and is still active. In his typically humorous style, this play (Das Opfer Helene) Helen of Troy tells the real story of how the Trojan War began and how unsuccessful she was in preventing it. A discussion of the play and its production introduces this program. The cast of Bay Area performers is as follows:

Helen – Hope Alexander-Willis

Menelaus – Jack Shearer

Hermione – Lorri Holt

Paris – Julian Lopez-Morillas

The play was produced at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley.

Program Three, Mon. Oct. 8, 8:00 pm

Monologue: Terry Jo by Max Bense & Ludwig Harig (produced in English).

Directed by Klaus Schöning. A co-production with WDR Köln. Mr. Schöning directed the original WDR production of this story about an American family murdered during a vacation cruise in the Caribbean. Their young daughter, Terry Jo, escaped on a raft and when rescued several days later, speaks incessantly and incoherently about the traumatic experience. We also hear the voices of others, taken from the testimony of the actual case. As Terry Jo becomes more clear, the others become more contradictory and obscure. The incident was reported in a French newspaper, from which the authors composed the piece. This is an exceptional example of a Hörspiel technique, which presents an objective and unsensational acoustical account of horrific events in daily life. Silences, edited pauses, and restraint are dramatic devices with some implication for survival in the contemporary world. The cast of Bay Area actors is as follows:

Terry Jo – Sigrid Wurschmidt

Voices – Robert Goss, Shabaka, Gus Johnson, Cyril Clayton, Nanos Valaoritis, Jenny Sterlin,David Parr, Steve LeGrand, Jerry Cornelius, Morgan Upton, Charles Dean, Elizabeth Keller, Pamela Marsh, and Erik Bauersfeld.

This work was produced at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley with technical production by Danny Kopelson.

Program Four, Sun. Oct. 14, 7:00 pm

Breakfast Conversations in Miami by Reinhard Lettau (produced in English).

Directed by R.G. Davis from a translation by Reinhard Lettau and Julie Prandi. Additional editing of the text by Robert Hurwitt. Directing and production assistance by Maria Gilardin. In this political satire, six former Latin American dictators meet in Miami and discuss their experiences as heads of state over a series of breakfasts at the airport hotel. Their interests shift from such matters as protection from kidnappers, popularity, and dealing with opposition parties to avant gardism, soap operas, sleeping late, and finding the “path to the inside” via cosmic thoughts and deep breathing. The cast of Bay Area performers is as follows:

Narrator – Pamela Marsh

Chairman – H. Robert Haswell

Mimosa – Charles Dean

Professor – James Cranna

Rosa – Morgan Upton

Schneider – Gail Chugg

Torrijos & Cellini – Don Sortor

Wessin – Bruce Mackey

The program was produced at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Technical production by Danny Kopelson. Editing by Robert Howe. Sound design and production by Erik Bauersfeld.

Program Five, Mon. Oct. 15, 8:00 pm

Gertrude by Wolfgang Schiffer & Charles Dörr. (produced in English).

Directed by Oscar Eustis from the translation by Robert Goss. Consulting director for the production was the author and director of the original WDR Hörspiel, Wolfgang Schiffer. Gertrude had been admitted to a halfway house for rehabilitation. Most doctors diagnosed her as an incurable schizophrenic. Listening to the radio was one of her ardent pastimes and she began a series of letters to WDR Köln, where two producers took an interest in her and began to document her struggles to find a new place in society. This attention brought a new meaning and encouragement to her life. Then the program was completed and Gertrude was left, once again, to find her way alone. This original Hörspiel is an outstanding example of documentary used in a dramatic artistic form. Director Eustis tried, in this adaptation, to preserve some of the original documentation. The voice of Gertrude and the people in her life are heard, and our actors carry on the story. The program is introduced with a discussion of how this was accomplished. In the cast are:

Gertrude – Abigail Booream

Producer – Wolfgang Schiffer

Other voices – Drew Eshelman, Gus Johnson, Laural Ollstein, David Parr, Jenny Sterlin

The program was recorded on locations in San Francisco and Berkeley, with technical assistance by Karin Brocco; technical production at Fantasy Studios by Danny Kopelson. Music by Maggi Payne. Director of production for radio: Erik Bauersfeld.

Program Six, Sun. Oct. 21, 8:30 pm

Roaratorio by John Cage (original WDR production).

Radio Play Text by John Cage. This is the first broadcast of Roaratorio in its entirety, in the United States, and one of the most complex works for radio ever produced. It contains a grand total of 2293 sound effects, all referred to in the texts selected from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. On this program, we first hear a discussion of the work with WDR producer and editor of Roaratorio, Klaus Schöning, including portions of a conversation with John Cage, and his address at Donaueschingen in October, 1979, on having received the Karl Sczuka Prize for the work. The first broadcast at WDR, Köln was October 22, 1979 with the following credits:

Voice – John Cage

Singer – Joe Heaney

Musicians – Seamus Ennis, Paddy Glackin, Matt Mallow, Peadher Mercier, Mell Mercier

Realization – John Cage & John David Fullemann

Cooperation – IRCAM Paris

Editor – Klaus Schöning

Assistant – Peter Behrensen

In this coming season, the Roaratorio will be staged for the Merce Cunningham Ballet Company. Two remarks by John Cage may help orient our audience for this broadcast. First, regarding the text: “I hope that Roaratorio will introduce people to the pleasures of Finnegan’s Wake when it is still on the side of poetry and chaos rather than something analyzed and known to be safe and law-abiding.” Secondly: “I had long come to the conclusion that the purpose of music, and I trust of Hörspiel, is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.”

Program Seven, Mon. Oct. 22, 8:00 pm

On Reading Orwell by Mauricio Kagel (original WDR production).

Produced and broadcast this year, 1984 at WDR Köln in recognition of George Orwell’s novel about the same year. In Orwell’s science fiction vision, 1984 was dominated by a Big Brother who altered language technologically in ways that reinforced his dictatorship. Kagel’s text consists entirely of such words, a meta-language. For example, two words connection and secured, become connecticured; unification and clearness become unificearness. These words are spoken and chanted. The sounds represent all the acoustical events mentioned in Orwell’s book, in a form of the daily indoctrination of employees in 1984′s Ministry of Truth: “Hate broadcasts . . . having the goal of keeping ideological loyalty fresh by insistent repetition.” Kagel is perhaps the most inventive and prolific of all Hörspiel artists. His works in all details, recording, directing, editing, composing and producing, are by himself. His work is that of the true ‘auteur’ of radio art. The program includes a discussion of Kagel’s work and a conversation between him and Klaus Schöning, WDR director and producer.

Radio by Ferdinand Kriwet (original WDR production).

This Hörspiel was originally in the series Acoustica International, co-produced by WDR, Köln, French Radio, and Sveriges Riksradio, Sweden. It won the Primios Ondas Prize in 1983. Kriwet is a master of radio collage and Radio draws its composition from broadcasts and archives around the world. “Voices that continually surround us, speaking, singing, buzzing shortwave; a concentration of what is on the air, day in and day out.” The program is introduced by Klaus Schöning, with portions of taped remarks by the composer about his work.

Program Eight, Sun. Oct. 28, 7:00 pm

On tonight’s program, we present two Hörspiele by American writers and members of the international artists’ movement, Fluxus. Both works were commissioned and produced by WDR, Köln.

Natural Assemblages and the True Crow by Allison Knowles (original WDR production)

Allison Knowles won the 1982 Karl Sczuka Prize for her Hörspiel Bean Sequences. On this program, we hear her second work. It is based on her 1982 poetic journal, which explores the subconscious world of childhood. The sounds accompanying the text (read in German and English) were performed by the composer using toys and other reminiscences of childhood. The program is introduced by Klaus Schöning, WDR producer and director, in a discussion with the artist about her work.

Hsin Hsin Minh by George Brecht (original WDR production).

Born in 1925 in Halfway, Oregon, Brecht has been living in Köln since 1972. This is his first radio piece and it is based on the the text from one of the great poetical-philosophical works of Zen Buddhism, Hsin Hsin Minh. The author is the Third Chinese Patriarch, Seng Ts’an, who died in the year 606. “Return to the origin, and the sense of things will announce itself to you; hunt for it in objects and you will miss it.” The program is introduced by a discussion with Klaus Schöning, about the unusual composition of the work, which is performed in four languages: English, French, German, and Chinese.

Program Nine, Mon. Oct. 29, 8:00 pm

The Other and I (Die Andere und Ich) by Gönter Eich (produced in English).

An American family touring Europe have detoured on a hot Sunday afternoon in August, to swim at a resort on the north Italian coast. On the way they pass a desolate fishing village. An old woman stands at the foot of a bridge, watching them pass. Ellen, the mother, sees her and later is drawn back to find her. When she does, she enters a world and life from which there is no escape. Gönter Eich (1907-1972) is the mot famous of all German writers for radio. His work remains more classic that the “New Hörspiel” of the past several programs, but his style is poetic, full of imagery and themes that derive largely from German Romanticism. In 1953, he married the Austrian poet and novelist Ilse Aichinger. A year earlier he was awarded the Hörspiel Prize of the War Blind (one of th emost prestigious awards in West Germany in the 1950′s). Eich explored lost identities in his plays – lost identities between people, between words and their “external correlatives,” and between the living and the dead. The Other and I (Die Andere und Ich) is just such a typical Eich theme. Ellen Harland becomes lost or captured in the body and life of another woman. She cannot return to her own self and her comfortable world, but must live out the whole life of an impoverished woman in a desolate fishing village on the coast of Italy. Directed and produced by Erik Bauersfeld.

The cast of Bay Area performers is as follows:

Ellen Harland / Camilla – Winifred Mann

John Harland – Morgan Upton

Mother – Shirley Jac-Wagner

Father – H. Robert Haswell

Giovanni – Rick Cimino

Philomena – Lorri Holt

Antonio – Mark Rousseau

Aunt – Barbara Oliver

Recorded and produced at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley.

Sometime in 1990, I was a pathetic high school student getting my heart slowly and painfully broken during an ill-advised Smith College visit to my first girlfriend. The relationship was clearly dying on the vine, and I was wretched. Things went from bad to worse, and then we went to see a visiting a cappella group, the Tufts Beelzebubs, perform in a campus lounge. A dapper bunch of fellows took the stage and proceeded to rock the house with a polished, harmonious set including Peter Gabriel’s “In your Eyes”. They finished with a stunning medley of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming Home)”, the final chords of which have haunted me ever since. I was spellbound from start to finish, and for five glorious minutes Major Tom’s dramatic return to earth eclipsed my romantic misery. I searched for a recording for years; it proved damnably elusive.

I found it at last, and although the sound quality is far from perfect, the song still carries the old magic. Even better, I’ve been granted permission to share it with you. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the 1990 Tufts Beelzebubs!

Download audio file (space-oddity-tufts-beelzebubs.mp3)
Right click to download “Space Oddity / Major Tom” by the Tufts Beelzebubs!

Read on to learn more about the performance and for some sentimental rambling from yours truly.

“Space Oddity / Major Tom”, an a cappella medley.

Arranged for male voices by Fernandi from the original songs by David Bowie (1968) and Peter Schilling (1983).

Solos by Dancing Knightly and Marty Mahoney, with a duet by Danny Lichtenfeld and John Taber Gifford.

Recorded by Bill Allen at Goddard Chapel, Tufts University, on Dec. 8 & 9, 1989.
Mixed and engineered by Bill Allen at RCA Studios, NYC.

CD Design and layout by Lewis and Clark.

Cover art by Danny Lichtenfeld.

The 1990 Beezebubs performance of “Space Oddity / Major Tom” launched me on my own love affair with college a cappella, which I would eventually pursue as part of a singing group. But although we had some great arrangements and fine performances, and I’ve since heard many other great groups, nothing has ever impressed me quite so much as that Beelzebubs rendition of Bowie and Schilling’s ballads of the lost astronaut.

As is often the way with such things, what you want most is hardest to get. I spent years trying to track down the only published recording of the arrangement, the Beelzebub’s live performance from their first Winter Invitational in 1989-90. (A second studio recording has since been released by the 2000-2001 Beelzebubs and can be found on their album, “Next”.) With a short print run that sold out years before I started looking, in that pre-Internet age it just wasn’t to be had.

But I’m happy to report that persistence finally paid off. I found my copy of that elusive song, and after contacting the current business manager of the ‘Bubs, Eli Seidman, I was graciously permitted to post it here for everyone. I am delighted to present what I consider to be a long-lost a cappella classic. It’s a second generation concert recording so sound quality could be better, and there is very noticeable tape hiss. (Incidentally, if anyone out there has a cleaner copy, send or email it to me and I’ll be happy to put it up.) Despite the recording’s flaws, I think the group’s contagious energy and sophisticated harmony still makes the tune soar into space.

How is this in any way related to audio drama? I confess: it isn’t. This is a genuine indulgence on my part. But the inventive ways in which the ‘Bubs used their voices to recreate the soundscape of a space voyage, from blips and beeps to thrusters whooshing stereophonically from right to left, should be of interest to anyone invested in using the human voice to create sound effects.

What can’t be recaptured here is the visual dynamism of the performance. The entire a cappella group turned itself into an intricate space machine, with each member performing a specific function as a whirling gear, rotating axle, or shifting lever. The movements were executed in time with the music, sometimes for comedic effect, as when a robotic arm mechanically handed Tom a drink after the lyrics requested it. I’ve since seen more sweeping choreography from the gigantic Amherst college Zumbyes, but none so intricate or clever.

So here’s to you, Beelzebubs of 1990: John Taber Gifford (President), Eric Valliere (Music Director), Danny Lichtenfeld (Business Manager), Damon Goldstein, Todd Herzog, Dave Kalis, Justin Kline, Dancing Knightly, Marty Mahoney, Geoff Mogilner, Leonard Squibb, Nolan Mondrow, Bert Okpokwasili, Kevin Page, Deke Sharon, and Greg Williamson. You did the impossible and lifted my spirits when I was at my lowest ebb. And here’s to the current Beelzebubs and their business manager, Eli Seidman, who kindly allowed me to bring this lost work back and share it. Why not give them a visit at their homepage? And here’s to you, too, first girlfriend of mine. I hope you’ve found true love and happiness as I have. And while I’m passing around tributes like a happy drunk, here’s to Fred for allowing me to post something with only the most tenuous of links to radio drama. (I’ll be back on track soon, I promise!)

And finally, here’s to any of you who find some enjoyment and inspiration in this music.

10 out of 10

This week Malleus kicks off a 3-part look at ballads that blur the boundaries between song, storytelling, and the spoken word. First up is the bad man, Black folk anti-hero Stagolee, in what I guarantee is the best and most wildly imaginative retelling of his legend that you are ever going to hear.

Julius Lester’s “Stagolee” is lightning in a bottle: drink deep, and be electrified.

“Stagolee”
Written and performed by Julius Lester.

First released by Vanguard Records on the LP “Julius Lester”, 1965.
Re-released by Ace Records on the CD “Dressed Like Freedom”, 2006.

Language: English.

“Stagolee” is 13:27 minutes long.

Availability: The LP has been out of print and hard to find for decades, but Ace records recently came to our rescue with their excellent CD retrospective, “Dressed Like Freedom”, compiled from Lester’s two Vanguard albums, “Julius Lester” (1965) and “Departures” (1967). Although Ace’s compilation lacks one of my favorite tracks, “You can’t make me doubt it”, it does contain all the spoken word material from the two LPs. “You can’t make me doubt it” and the other omitted tracks (actually, all the tracks) can be downloaded from itunes.
“Dressed Like Freedom” is a British release, currently available as an import through Amazon.com and other sellers. It’s a solid album that is well worth the price.

You may be the Sheriff, and you may be White, but you ain’t Stagolee.

Now deal with that.

- Stagolee

Pete, looks like I’m going to have to use one of my giant death thunderbolts to get that Stagolee.

- The Lord, to St. Peter

Excerpts from the book Black Folktales by Julius Lester, 1969.

By any measure, Julius Lester (b. 1939 – ) is a fascinating figure.

Emerging during the Civil rights era as an activist, Lester made his mark working with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Over the course of the long career that followed Lester became a radio announcer, a university professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and ultimately a celebrated children’s book writer, authoring among other works the award-winning To Be a Slave. I had the great good fortune to experience his wry eloquence directly when Lester, a convert to Judaism, gave a frank and penetrating lecture on “Blacks and Jews” at my college back in the 90′s.

But when I first discovered him in the mid 80′s I had no idea Lester was anything but a great Blues singer. I was working as a sound engineer for the children’s radio drama workshop at KOPN, a community radio station in Columbia, MO. A curious white boy exploring the Blues for the first time, I’d browse the station’s collection when I got a break and listen to old records in the editing studio. I didn’t know Julius Lester from John Lee Hooker back then, and I count that ignorance a very good thing. Otherwise I might have overlooked the lesser-known Lester’s debut, “Julius Lester” (1965), and missed one hell of an album.

Although all the songs on “Julius Lester” were accomplished, it was “Stagolee”, an inspired blend of Blues singing and spoken word storytelling, that captured my imagination. “Stagolee” was a real-life St. Louis pimp named Lee Shelton, who was tried and convicted for murdering William Lyons on Christmas Eve back in 1895. A legend grew up around the deed and the man, and it took such vigorous root that this minor criminal ended up becoming a major archetype in African-American folklore. Stagolee’s crime also inspired popular songs, and countless versions of them have been and continue to be performed. After Lester’s, my personal favorite is Taj Mahal’s hauntingly delicate tribute. Most performers focus exclusively on the events leading up to the murder, a card game gone wrong, and finish with the cold-blooded execution of Lyons.

According to the liner notes, Lester used to sing “Stagolee” to his one year old daughter, improvising spoken word segments between verses. Not a song I’d sing to a baby (although Taj Mahal’s version sounds so sad and sweet it could be mistaken for a lullaby), but I’m glad Lester did: it unleashed his febrile imagination, and he built up an elaborate mythos from this simple tale.

Lester’s version begins like standard Blues renditions of “Stagolee”, but things take a turn for the fantastic after Stagolee is hung by a Sheriff’s posse. Stagolee is so bad that his neck refuses to crack, and the lawmen are forced to let him go. Stagolee goes on to live a seemingly immortal life of sin until he attracts St. Peter’s attention, and St. Peter takes the case straight to the Lord. Sitting in a “red rosy rocking chair” that conceals a stack of “giant death thunderbolts”, Lester’s Lord is a cross between your irascible grandmother and Zeus. The Lord summons Death from the stables and sends him to collect Stagolee, but Stack isn’t impressed by the pale-looking white man and waves his gun in the Grim Reaper’s face. Flustered, Death rides off, and it falls to God Himself to settle Stagolee.

Which He does. With a thunderbolt.

BOOM!
Can’t mess with the Lord too much, you know that.

But you can’t keep a bad man down. Worried that Gabriel can’t swing, Stagolee refuses to wait for judgment day and crawls out of his grave, headed for Heaven . . .

The Stagolee story traditionally veils resistance to white oppression beneath a thin covering of Black-on-Black crime. The songs are superficially disapproving, but subtly admiring; Stagolee murders a black man, but he is so bad that corrupt white law can never have him. And Lester’s song gives Stagolee’s resistance a Southern, Civil Rights era spin. The real Stagolee murdered Billy Lyons in St. Louis. Most songs about Stagolee don’t mention where the story takes place. But Lester relocates the Stagolee legend to the town of “Hang-a-N*gg*r, Georgia” where all trials are “conducted Southern style, ‘N*gg*r you guilty’.” ?After this article first went up, Julius Lester emailed me a response. ?His comments on the song’s placement were interesting, and he’s kindly permitted me to share them here:

It’s a Jim Crow world so racially bleak that Stagolee’s criminality is almost incidental – justice only exists for those bad enough to make it or take it. Traditionally the Stagolee ballad carries a mournful air, but despite the dark setting and theme, this “Stagolee” is anything but depressive. Here sadness is replaced with the sizzling Black outrage of the 1960s, balanced but not watered-down by Lester’s razor-sharp wit.

That wit combines with a syncretic dash of Greek myth, a side of Christianity, and a heaping helping of African-American oral tradition to raise Lester’s “Stagolee” to a new level. Lester sends Stack on an Odyssey through Heaven and Hell, both of which turn out to be just as segregated as Georgia. A sheepish St. Peter tells Stack why there are no black people in Heaven, hemming and hawing:

“Well, I tell you how it goes. You know, we had to get rid of ‘em. You know, they’s up here playin’ the Blues on the harps, you know, and flattin’ thirds in the hymns, and flattin’ fifths and all that – we couldn’t have ‘em up here. All we got now is white folks and some middle-class Negroes, you know, some of the bourgeoisie, you know, we had to send all the, you know, bad colored folks down to Hell.”

Stagolee didn’t wait for another word, he took off goin’ down to Hell.

And how does Stagolee’s descent into the Inferno turn out? Let’s just say Milton’s adage from Paradise Lost, Book I holds true: “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.” Thus Lester’s afterlife narrative is at once entirely new and entirely in keeping with Stagolee’s subversive appeal: “Better a bad life, than a life serving corrupt White masters.”

Julius Lester’s “Stagolee” is like no other, taking off where most versions end. The vividly re-imagined story is ably served by Lester’s voice, strong when singing, loose and sharp and full of sly humor when narrating. His guitar playing is solid rather than virtuoso, but he makes simple chords ring out with languid, insouciant honesty. There are some minor flaws – Stagolee’s gun seems to change from a .41 to a .44 depending on which rhymes better at the time, and Lester flubs one line (“Now Bill-Stagolee . . .”). But for comic timing that goes right for the gut and a story that intoxicates the mind, you really can’t get much closer to perfection.

All in all, this Civil Rights era take on one of Black folklore’s darkest archetypes is a jagged tour-de-force. My highest recommendation.

And if you like the recording, check out Lester’s Black Folktales (1969), which takes the story even further. It’s a bit less angry – no “Hang-a-N*gg*r, Georgia” – but more developed. And after hearing this song, you’ll relish the opportunity to walk a few extra miles with Stagolee on his Dantesque journey between Heaven and Hell.

Hi folks -

Just a quick note.

I intended to write a single column this week about three ballads: Julius Lester’s blistering “Stagolee”, Gordon Bok’s gentle cante-fable “Peter Kagan and the Wind”, and the Tuft’s Beelzebubs long lost “Major Tom / Space Oddity”. But as I got going, I realized this wasn’t going to do any of them justice. So instead of addressing all of them at once I’ll be devoting a single column to each, spread out over three weeks. First up is Julius Lester’s “Stagolee”, to be posted later today.

My apologies to those waiting for the Tuft’s Beelzebubs “Major Tom / Space Oddity” mp3 – that will go up, with the review, next week.

8 out of 10

Hollywood has decreed that summertime is superhero time, so today we don our spandex and take to the skies with this historical release. Superman may not pack the same box office punch he once did, but this super-delicious old time radio serial still packs plenty of P-E-P: Pep! With its clean bubble-gum flavor and cartoon verve, “Superman vs. Atom Man” leaves this comic book afficionado asking “why weren’t more OTR superhero shows this much fun?”

Written by Ben Peter Freeman. First episode broadcast 10/11/1945.

Produced by Radio Spirits, Inc. in association with Smithsonian Product Development and Licensing.
Digitally restored and remastered.

Language: English. (With a few badly pronounced German words thrown in occasionally by Nazi villains.)

7 CDs, 38 episodes, 7 1/2 hours long.

Also includes a surprisingly entertaining and well-written booklet by Anthony Tollins, with a foreword by “Atom Man” actor Mason Adams. Adams is a firecracker in that old-time old boy’s way, quoting from Xaviera Hollander’s Happy Hooker and writing just as he acted: with lots of exclamation points!

Availability: Radio Spirits no longer publish this colorfully packaged classic, a shame since it’s one of the best things they ever released. It’s harder (but far from impossible) to find on CD than it should be, but easy to get on audio cassette secondhand. Try amazon or ebay sellers.

Those of us who didn’t grow up during the 1940′s often imagine our parents or grandparents grew up in a black-and-white entertainment vacuum. Sure the world was more open and unspoiled, sure California was a genuine paradise, sure you could visit Yosemite at the right time of year and have the park all to yourself, but what about passive entertainment? Where were T.V., color movies, video games – all the readymade flights of fancy that we take for granted today? Dana Carvey built his whole “Grumpy Old Man” skit on Saturday Night Live around this perception. He’d stubbornly bark that since kids “didn’t have no talking movies” in his day, there was nothing to do for fun except throw yourself off a cliff, and when you landed your spine would shoot through your skull. “And we liked it!”

Carvey’s caricature aside, for the 1940′s child who craved escape from the everyday, an entertaining suicide was not the only option. Aside from a wilder, more beautiful country to create their own adventures in, kids had radio back then, and at its best Old Time radio could be pretty magical. “Superman vs. Atom Man”, an extended story arc from the ongoing Superman radio serial starring Clayton Collyer, was one of the highlights, and even in our media-saturated present there’s still plenty of charm and thrills to be had from this post-WWII confection.

The title alone tells you that “Superman vs. the Atom Man” had something over countless other Old Time Radio superhero shows: a worthy opponent. Television shows have often avoided the colorful supervillains of the comics in favor of vanilla gangster types simply because they were less expensive antagonists. A supervillain might require extensive special effects like laser-beam eyes, after all, but a gangster only needed a suit and a gun. But the problem with gangsters is that they make really dull opponents for superheroes. Bullets bounce off Superman’s chest, for goodness’ sake! So why did old time superhero radio shows, which didn’t have the budgetary effects limitations of television, also stick to gangsters? In today’s exciting story, Superman stops a bank robbery by punching some criminals who are 1000 times weaker than he is! Yawn.

Meanwhile on the comic book side, there have been plenty – far too many, actually – of villains that somehow use kryptonite to take on the Man of Steel. Metallo, a semi-tragic cyborg with a Kryptonite heart, is one of the most interesting. But the old time radio writers of “Superman vs. Atom Man” didn’t make use of Superman’s comic book rogues gallery, creating their own kryptonite man instead from a former member of the Hitler Youth. After eluding the triumphant Allied forces, the mad Nazi scientist known as Der Teufel creates the “Atom Man” in a hidden bunker in Germany by injecting liquid kryptonite into young Heinrich Milch. Outfitted with some campy sci-fi gear, Milch could then flip a switch and ionize the kryptonite, sending lethal radioactive beams through his metal-gloved hands. Mason Adams plays Heinrich Milch with straightforward but infectious zeal. Taking the name “Henry Miller”, the Atom Man poses as a war veteran to infiltrate the Daily Planet, slyly befriending Superman in his alter-ego of reporter Clark Kent. Suspecting Kent’s true identity, Miller kidnaps Jimmy Olsen and lures Superman to a secluded beach. His intent? To murder the Man of Steel and then create a campaign of terror against America.

These days Nazis have been done to death as pulp villains, but back in 1945 they still had relevance and credibility. Of course, even then they were being presented as silly caricatures. So the mad Nazi scientist who engineers the Atom Man calls himself “Der Teufel” (“The Devil”). But what really kills me is the name they chose for the Atom Man: Heinrich Milch. So you have a mad German scientist who calls himself “the Devil”, and you can’t come up with a more menacing name for his evil creation than “Henry Milk?” Why not throw in his sinister sidekick “Johann Plaetzchen” (John Cookies)?

Clayton Collyer’s Superman is appropriately diffident as Kent and steely-jawed as the hero, but his moments of desperation and weakness are the most riveting. Many Old Time Radio Superman shows suffered from never placing the hero in any real danger, but here he hovers on the brink of paranoia and death. The supporting cast of regulars plays well to (stereo)type, including the ever-annoying Jimmy Olsen (Jackie Kelk, who originated the radio role that later moved into the comic books) and blustering Newspaper publisher Perry White (Julian Noa). Lois Lane (Joan Alexander) fans will be disappointed, as the character is barely present and there is no romance to speak of. I was pleased. Superman, for better or worse, is categorically a little boy’s fantasy, and little boys think girls and romance are icky.

But the stars of “Superman vs. Atom Man” are really the villains. When he finally confronts Superman in his Atom Man persona Mason Adams’ voice takes on a metallic distortion as he raves in the grand old bad-guy manner. “DIE, SUPERMAN, DIE!!” Kind of like a pre-Marvel Doctor Doom, actually, without the aristocratic touch.
(With his green robes and metal mask, his picture on the CD box cover even looks like Doctor Doom, although this costume actually comes from the movie serial version of the story and wasn’t featured in the audio drama. The film version ditched the Nazi angle and recast perennial Superman villain Lex Luthor as the Atom Man.)

If you like your villains subtle then Adams’ over-the-top homicidal fits won’t appeal to you, but if you can enjoy a classic villain played to the hilt, the way Adams throws himself into the role is still great fun to hear. As straightforward as the Superman / Atom Man rivalry is, unlike the overhyped and frankly stupid 1992 “Death of Superman” comic book story (itself made into Dirk Maggs’ 1994 Superman audio drama “Superman – Doomsday and Beyond / Superman Lives!” by the BBC), “Superman vs. Atom Man” gives us more than a grudge match between two bruisers. There are a variety of colorful villains scheming to make use of Miller’s abilities and the power vacuum he creates after burying Superman alive. Aside from Der Teufel, the kryptonite-purveying Scarlet Widow (Elspeth Eric) and the crimelord Sidney (Ned Wever delivering an open tribute to classic film actor Sidney Greenstreet) keep the drama entertaining with their machinations and internecine power struggles. Sidney in particular is enjoyably decadent and twisted, gleefully setting in motion a plot to kill Superman that is surprisingly sadistic. Meanwhile, after being continually manipulated by his elders in crime, Atom Man Henry Miller plots to murder them all with Oedipal fervor.

And murder he does. Those who look back on the 1940′s as a “more innocent time” in the media may be surprised that the Atom Man actually kills some of his rivals in cold blood. Naturally, only fellow evil-doers fall, but this still came as a surprise to me. I myself grew up on the 1970′s superfriends cartoon where heroes and villains weren’t even allowed to hit each other, much less kill anyone. Who would have thought children’s media was less violent in the 70′s than the 40′s?

Those who think advertising was more restrained in the 40′s are in for another surprise. Announcer Dan McCullough’s endless pitches for Kellogg’s Pep cereal have been retained in their entirety, and they take up a sizable portion of each brief episode. There is a certain innocence to McCullough’s open, unsophisticated, and utterly relentless hawking, and some amusement to be had hearing the endless ways he comes up with to get kids excited about the comic book buttons Kellogg’s was putting in their cereals. Also interesting is how few of the popular characters featured on the buttons have lasted to the present day. Moon Mullins, anyone? But after listening to 38 episodes worth of these historical advertisements you will probably find yourself wishing that the Smithsonian team had just edited them out.

Unlike most Radio Spirits releases, “Superman vs. Atom Man on Radio” has been digitally remastered. As a result, this Old Time Radio broadcast sounds remarkably clean for its age. I’m not sure if other versions of the broadcast are available – sometimes OTR can be found free on the net – but in this case you will definitely want the remastered version.

“Superman vs. Atom Man” is not for everyone. If you don’t appreciate camp or are just above juvenile entertainments, by all means steer clear. Sophisticated material this isn’t. But taken for what it is, this is accomplished serial entertainment that is enthusiastically performed and smartly done. In short, “Superman vs. Atom Man” packs considerable nostalgic charm and genuine entertainment for old and new-time listeners alike. If you’ve never dipped your toe into Old Time Radio superhero serials and are curious, this is an excellent place to start. It’s also an excellent place to stop, because they don’t get any better than this.

Next week:

Malleus resumes its regular schedule – for real, this time – with a special post looking at three ballads that blend spoken word storytelling with song. Tune in to read about the maritime wonder of Gordon Bok’s “Peter Kagan and the Wind”, the biting southern satire of Julius Lester’s “Stagolee”, and to download the Tuft’s Beelzebub’s original recording of the long lost a cappella classic, “Major Tom / Space Oddity”!

Come celebrate the Kyoto festival of Gion Matsuri with this collection of binaural soundscapes. Music, pictures, pachinko, giant wagons covered with ancient tapestries, and lots of Japanese people saying “Oooooh!” at just the right moments. What more could you want? Get a pair of headphones and enjoy this album, recorded by myself and free to all.

Happy Gion Matsuri!

During the summer of 2001 my wife Pam and I went to Bali, Thailand, and Japan on what was a truly magical honeymoon. (All the good pictures below, by the way, are hers. The bad ones are mine.) Eager to participate in Japan?s colorful festivals, we planned our trip around one of the most famous: Gion Matsuri, which is celebrated every July in Kyoto. Although the festival runs all month, it peaks on the 17th, when giant floats called mikoshi, yama, and hoko are pulled through the streets of the city.

This ritual parade dates back to 869, when Japan was ravaged by a terrible plague. Seeking deliverance for his people, Emperor Seiwa sent a messenger to the Yasaka Jinja shrine of Kyoto, requesting the high priest?s assistance in banishing the plague. It was decided that sacred floats dedicated to the Kami would be drawn through the streets of Kyoto to banish the illness, and following this undertaking the sickness did indeed subside. In 970 Gion Matsuri became an annual affair, stopping only briefly during the fifteenth century and during the post WWII American occupation. Gion Matsuri is considered the largest and most popular religious (Shinto) observance in Japan.

I got interested in binaural recordings from the work of Thomas Manuel Lopez (such as his excellent production of “Sticks”, which I reviewed last week) and through the fascinating work of sound artist Aaron Ximm. Ximm has traveled extensively through Asia and has made many great soundscape recordings, ranging from immersive slice-of-life takes to re-mixed aural artworks. (In the latter category I’m particularly fond of Ximm’s Lethe, which uses Southeast Asian ambiance to create a walk through the underworld.) I highly recommend looking into more of Ximm’s work at his website, the aptly named Quiet American.

The tracks below are digital recordings of aural environments in and around the festival that I made using professional quality DSM-1/L lo-noise binaural microphones. The sound quality is excellent and immersive – the head-mounted mics are designed to pick up sound like the human ear and replicate a sense of 3-dimensional acoustic placement. Beyond hearing stereo effects of left and right, the listener is placed in the midst of a sonic environment. I highly recommend the use of headphones when listening to these recordings in order to heighten their 3-dimensional qualities and to achieve the clearest possible sound reproduction. Playing these tracks over loudspeakers will produce quaintly listenable but washed-out sound.

If you love sound, this piece of audio tourism can be enjoyed all by itself. Although I am retaining copyright to this material, anyone (professional or amateur) interested in using these soundscapes in an audio drama is welcome to do so at no cost. I require only notification and a credit.

Enjoy the trip!

Yama float passes by, Gion Matsuri parade (1:28)
Download audio file (01-yama-float-passes.mp3)
Right click to download.

A small float bearing a tableau of Noh-style figures passes by to the accompaniment of airy flutes and resonant chimes. As the float recedes into the distance its music is absorbed into the murmur of the watching throng.

Turning a Hoko, Gion Matsuri parade (6:55)
Download audio file (06-turning-a-hoko.mp3)
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The parade of floats is the height of the Gion Matsuri festival, and the height of the parade floats, quite literally, are the towering hoko. Hokos are two-storied mobile towers shaped like Shinto shrines and surmounted by scaffolding from which a conical mountain of cloth is draped. The first story features mammoth wooden wheels, the second is draped with rich tapestries and has a platform that seats the hoko’s musicians. The hoko is topped by a sacred tree, symbolic as the place where the spirit of the Kami dwells.

As the Hoko weighs anything from four to thirteen metric tons and can have a height of seventy-eight feet, it is placed on four massive wheels and is pulled by fifty men who walk in rhythm to the accompaniment of the flautists and drummers riding inside. According to tradition the Hoko carry the souls of the ancestors who have died since the previous festival and the music has the magic effect of collecting the souls into the tree so that they can be taken to the Gion shrine to spend one week in the company of the Kami. The giant wooden wheels of the hoko emit tremendous creaking noises as they are turned – the aural effect is like hearing a tree split apart by lightning, and is well worth listening for. Hokos have no steering mechanism, which means that periodically large wooden wedges must be shoved under the front wheels of the Hoko, righting its course with a loud whump!

An impressive array of 40-50 men, divided between two leading ropes, coordinate their efforts through chants and the music of the flautists and drummers to rotate the Hokos 90 degrees at strategic intersections. It?s no mean feet to accomplish this with seventy-eight foot tall constructions lacking any steering mechanisms. A terrific sense of drama is generated by a panoply of sounds: the cracking of the giant wooden wheels as they turn on slats of wetted bamboo, music whose tempo and mood reflect the progress of the hoko bearers, and an audience of thousands whose attentive silence is penetrated by well-timed ?ooohs?, applause, and occasionally laughter at failed attempts.

This recording was made from the midst of a thick crowd of Japanese onlookers who murmur continually but only betray their true numbers when, following a dramatic cracking creak, they raise their voices in the first appreciative Ooooh! The music becomes upbeat and jaunty after the bearers succeed in their initial efforts. A persistent and vocal female hawker can be heard above the uproar, as well as an ambulance siren and the comments of the crowd. As the hoko finally rolls by its progress from right to left comes across stereophonically.

Creaking Hoko passes by, Gion Matsuri parade (3:10)
Download audio file (08-creaking-hoko.mp3)
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A large hoko approaches and passes by. This recording was not made at a corner, so no turning here. The sound of the music rises and diminishes gradually and to good dramatic effect as the hoko nears, and the groaning, creaking noises of the wooden structure hint at its incredible size.

Shaking the palanquins at the Yasaka-Jinja shrine, Gion Matsuri (3:15)
Download audio file (05-shaking-the-palanquins.mp3)
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Competitive teams of Japanese men in traditional attire swept in front of the Yasaka-Jinja shrine bearing three enormous palanquins, upon which sat the three mikoshi (portable shrines) of the Gion Matsuri festival.

These golden mikoshi, which carry the chief Kami of the Gion Shrine through the streets of Kyoto to the temporary festival abode of the gods, were each covered in numerous chimes and clappers. As the teams swept their burdens to and fro, urged on by the calls of leaders with megaphones, they shook the mikoshi rhythmically to create dense syncopated rhythms with the rattling chimes. The acoustic energy they generated was tremendous.

Yoi-Yama night market, Gion Matsuri (20:08)
Download audio file (02-yoi-yama-night-market.mp3)
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In this ?interactive? recording, I plunged ears first into the bustling festivities of Yoi-Yama, which takes place on the evening immediately preceding the hoko parade. During this lantern-lit night market the well-to-do of Kyoto opened their windows to proudly display hereditary treasures to passers-by: full suits of samurai armor, tapestries, and even a staged glimpse of a high-class dinner party being entertained by a geisha. (Whatever joke or tale she was telling, the dinner guests were hanging on her every word.) Meanwhile on the main thoroughfares hawkers shout, electronic games buzz, local men?s associations chant and sing from stationary hoko floats, and the night is alive with the hubbub of Japanese voices. The Japanese are literally wearing their historical past, conspicuously dresed in light summer yukatas, more elaborate kimonos, and even a few pieces of samurai attire.

Unlike the other tracks on this disc, this one was not recorded from a single stationary position. I moved through the throngs, and this movement is reflected in the sound placement effects of the recording, communicating a definite sense of progression through three-dimensional space.

The journey starts at the base of a hoko, from which musicians shout. 8:55 minutes into the recording I happen upon three pachinko machines lined up alongside an alley, and I pause to record children playing them. Then my wife Pam takes a crack at it, giving up after two bouts. Pachinko is a confusing game.

Moving away from the clatter of metal balls back into the crowd, I am again engulfed by its chatter until diverted by a small craft store, whose manager ushers me in with ?Dozo!? Inside are stalls attended by smiling saleswomen who sing out salutations in Japanese. After a few minutes I leave this quiet interlude, exiting back into the night just as a nearby hoko erupts into song.

Kyoto life around the festival:

Pachinko parlor (6:18)
Download audio file (03-pachinko-parlor.mp3)
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Nothing can prepare you for the beguiling aural chaos that is pachinko. The deafening blend of rattling metal balls, electronic blips and jingles, bass-heavy background music, and the greetings of the hostess projected over loudspeakers quickly becomes hypnotic – certainly the players seem to assume a meditative trance.

This track begins with the hostess? greeting to me as I enter the parlor and concludes as I exit back into the busy Kyoto night. During this recording I walked down the aisles between rows of machines, stopping every now and then to record a customer cashing in his winnings with a metallic clatter. Wearing headphones and played at the proper volume (don’t hurt your ears, but pachinko is loud!), the sound is intoxicating and overwhelming.

Okonomiyaki restaurant (10:50)
Download audio file (04-okonomiyaki-restaurant.mp3)
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Sushi may be the food Westerners first think of when it comes to Japan, but the hot teppan (iron grill) of an Okonomiyaki restaurant in Japan is a true feast for the ears. Okonomiyaki means ?cook what you like?, and essentially one can have whatever meat, seafood, or vegetables one wants cooked into a cabbage and vegetable batter. At some Okonomiyaki restaurants customers cook for themselves with a small personal grill, while at others professional cooks do the preparations and leave only the seasoning to the patrons. In this case the cooks did the job, but fortunately for me the kitchen was open and I was able to sit right in front of them. Their macho culinary technique comes across in the authoritative way they slap food onto the sizzling grill, chop and sort with cutlery, and sing out call-and-response choruses of ?irasshaimase!? (welcome!) and ?ohayo gozaimasu!? (thank you!).

Bonus Track:

Baseball game at the Tokyo Dome, Tokyo
The Yakult Swallows almost score a run on the Yomiuri Giants
Download audio file (09-baseball-game-tokyo-dome.mp3)
Right click to download.

It’s got nothing to do with Gion Matsuri or Kyoto, but I couldn’t resist throwing this track in. The Yomiuri Giants fans, amongst whom I was sitting, use their music bands, chants, and plastic clappers to good effect here to ridicule the opposing team?s failed effort. This short sequence will give you an evocative hint of the differences between Japanese and American-style baseboru.

9 out of 10

What possessed Tom Lopez to do this half-baked horror tale? Devil or angel, it was an inspired muse: Lopez doesn’t just adapt Wagner’s story, he rewrites it, and the result is far more chilling than the original.

?

Adapted by Meatball Fulton (Thomas Manuel Lopez) from the 1974 short story ?Sticks? by Karl Edward Wagner.

Directed by: Bill Raymond.

ZBS Foundation, 1998.

Language: English.

Availability: The ZBS production of “Sticks” was first published as an audio cassette, later as an Audio CD. Those versions are no longer in print, but “Sticks” can still be purchased as an mp3 download from the ZBS website here. Although “30 Second Telephone Terror Theatre” is sorely missed, this download version is easily the strongest package yet – for $12.00 you not only get “Sticks” but also Lopez’s own dystopian tale “O Boy O Boy O” and Craig Strete’s “The Bleeding Man”, another excellent ZBS horror adaptation. Previous releases of “Sticks” bundled it with either one or the other.

“Sticks” is 28:15 minutes long.

I’ve read Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks”, listened to the ZBS audio drama adaptation, and even seen parts of it cribbed for the most powerful scenes of The Blair Witch Project. And I can’t shake the feeling that I still don’t know the story at all. Legend has it that “Sticks” was inspired by the real life experience of Weird Tales artist Lee Brown Coye, who claimed he really did stumble across a strange abandoned farmhouse in North Pitcher, New York. Coye reported that the house was surrounded by bizarre ideographic assemblages of sticks when he first discovered it in 1938, and that these were later washed away completely by flooding. Although the originals were destroyed the weird sculptures made quite an impression on him, and he incorporated inexplicable stick-designs into his work thereafter. Or so the story goes.

I claim ignorance of “Sticks” because I’ve neither read Coye’s personal account of his farmhouse discovery nor seen any of the drawings that were inspired by it. But if, as internet scribes have it, Coye never disclosed a purpose to the stick signs he found, he had better horror instincts than Wagner. The ideographic sculptures of “Sticks” remain powerful and menacing only as long as they remain unknowable.

To his credit, Wagner didn’t literally decipher the strange signs. Instead, he defined them in broadly Lovecraftian terms: the stick designs are elder glyphics in service of the Great Old Ones, rendered by a megalithic cult that migrated from Europe to North America a long, long time ago. I’ve enjoyed Wagner’s other writings, particularly his iconoclastic Kane tales, but that’s a pretty disappointing explanation. Resorting to Lovecraft’s hoary old tropes is the imaginative equivalent of crying “uncle”. And call it professional bias, but as someone who researches Native American cultures, pseudo-scientific histories of ancient European settlements in the Americas rub me the wrong way.

Wagner’s story is strongest in the beginning when it all but retells Coye’s. Horror artist Colin Leverett makes his way through the backwoods of Upstate New York and stumbles across a farmhouse surrounded by bizarre ideograms made of sticks. Following this, Leverett starts incorporating the weird stick patterns into his art. Things look up briefly for Leverett when the stick designs go over well and he is commissioned to illustrate a volume of horror stories by H. Kenneth Allard. But the shadowy cult still exists, and Leverett’s use of their stick designs draws their attention. It all ends badly.

I mean that literally. The strange power of Coye’s stick effigies gets diluted in this story of artistic obsession and eternal life, and the conclusion is silly and trite, with a ghoul unveiling his sinister master plan like some old dimestore novel villain. What possessed Thomas Manuel Lopez to adapt this half-baked horror tale?

I don’t know what possessed him, but devil or angel, it was an inspired muse. Lopez considerably rewrote Wagner’s flawed tale, inventing love interest Carol out of whole cloth and completely excising central characters like the stereotypical scholar Dr. Alexander Stefroi and the story’s absurd central villain. Presumably he did this in the interest of better drama; among other things, having Carol accompany Colin allowed Lopez to use their dialogue to set the scene rather than giving Colin an improbable monologue or using an omniscient narrator. But Lopez’s artistic license also resulted in a far better story. That’s right, ZBS’s “Sticks” is one of those rare instances where the adaptation far outshines the original.

Lopez takes the best qualities of Wagner’s story and brings them forward while muting or eliminating the weakest moments. He plays up Colin’s Heart of Darkness descent into madness, even taking the artist’s obsession a step further than Wagner by having Colin cover the walls of his own room with the strange stick designs. He also wisely takes a step back from Wagner’s excesses, keeping Colin’s state of mind ambiguous: in the ZBS version Colin does not wake up clutching a half-eaten human heart. Probably the best decision Lopez made was to do away with Wagner’s talking villain. Without a human voice to articulate their plans, Lopez’s cult is far more frightening than Wagner’s ever was. The heavy, wet breathing Bill Raymond gives to the ancient ghouls is all they need to inspire fear.

Audio dramatists on a tight budget can take heart from “Sticks” – Lopez turns out an effective horror story with a cast of only three actors this time. (AM/FM theater have since done the same with their excellent adaptation of “God of the Razor”.) Curiously, leading man Steven Keats’s performance is arguably the weakest. His portrayal of Colin Leverett is perfectly serviceable, but doesn’t always convince and falls short of definitive. ZBS regulars Laura Esterman (billed by ZBS as Blanche Blackwell in other performances) and Bill Raymond round out the cast as Colin’s love interest Carol and horror publisher George (instead of Wagner’s “Prescott”) Brandon, respectively. It’s always a risk to rely too heavily on the same actors too often, since this can make your productions sound too much alike. What’s remarkable here is that precisely the opposite happens. Bill Raymond, known to Ruby and Jack Flanders fans as the irascible, cartoonishly energetic (and pretty much interchangeable) characters T.J. Teru and Short Top Detroit, is barely recognizable as the brusque George Brandon. As Brandon, Raymond is neither funny nor even all that likeable. Bill Raymond not likeable? Now that’s acting. And the tough-as-nails, no-nonsense Laura Esterman of Ruby fame is just as smart as ever in “Sticks”, but far more delicate and vulnerable than you would believe possible. Excellent work.

“Sticks” was recorded using a Kunstkopf (“artificial head” – the German term is very unfortunately misspelled on ZBS’s cover) binaural recording device. Nicknamed “Fritz”, this device is a dummy head with mics where human ears would be, and it picks up sound like human ears do. The result: the aural environments it records assume three-dimensional presence when listened to with headphones. This creates a strong “you are there” impression, almost as if you are standing on stage in the midst of the actors as they perform. It’s a technique that is well-suited to horror tales for obvious reasons. The best binaural sequences in “Sticks” take place in the abandoned farmhouse, as Colin and Carol go exploring in different directions, leaving you feeling stuck between them in a building that you’d really like to leave. The smartest use of binaural effects happens in the cellar, when Lopez uses it to cue you in to the uncomfortably close presence of the ghoul long before protagonist Colin even knows it is there.

I’d have to say, though, that the real star of “Sticks” isn’t the superb acting or even the binaural effects. It’s Tim Clark’s music. As with Raymond and Esterman, if you’re familiar with Clark’s work from other ZBS productions you will scarcely recognize his performance here. And that’s all to the good. There are no dream-like space music vistas unfolding here a la Jack Flanders, or the smartly syncopated background beats you might expect from the man who scored countless Rubys. The soundtrack to “Sticks” is subtly atmospheric, implacably glacial, and spare. It’s Clark as you’ve never heard him before.

In the end, Clark outdoes Wagner and even Lopez: his music is the most evocative translation of Coye’s weird stick ideograms to date, and the primary reason that this audio adaptation of a profoundly visual terror works at all.

Next week: Malleus continues to explore the world of binaural sound with some 3-D audio tourism. Put on some headphones, turn off the lights, and experience the Japanese Shinto festival of Gion Matsuri as recorded by yours truly in Kyoto, Japan in 2001. Free to all sentient beings, this soundscape album will go up next week on July 17th, just in time to honor Gion Matsuri 2008. If you can’t make it to Kyoto, be here!

10 out of 10

In a subtle and varied presentation, actor Fred Morsell brings the full force of statesman and former slave Frederick Douglass’s eloquence to bear on the issue closest to him: slavery. Re-enactment at its finest, Morsell’s performance confirms both the classic status and contemporary relevance of Douglass’s legendary 5th of July speech. Yes, 5th of July. Read on!

An abridged performance of Frederick Douglass’s July 5th, 1852 speech to the Rochester (New York) Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, “The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro.”

Adapted and performed by: Fred Morsell.

TBM Records, 1992.

Language: English.

CD or audio cassette, 46:56 minutes.

Availability: In print and available from the publisher. Two other recordings of Douglass speeches, “The Lesson of the Hour” and “Why I Became a Woman’s Right’s Man” are also available. An order form can be found here.

The publisher recommends calling this number to place orders: (800) 965-3347.
Chances are good that you will talk with proprietor Tanya Bickley, who is a Douglass enthusiast with a genuine passion for his work. If you share that passion, please encourage her to record Douglass’s autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), with Mr. Morsell. It’s high time this American classic was released as an audiobook!

Try before you buy: RealAudio clips from this and other speeches by Douglass can be found at the publisher’s website here.

I discovered A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave sitting on a study hall bookshelf in junior high school. I’d read books about slavery before, but none written by former slaves. Curious, I cracked the book open and read a few pages. Soon I couldn’t put the book down. Douglass’s harrowing story of escape from bondage and rise to national prominence was compelling, but his power as a storyteller was even more so. Having fought tooth and nail for his literacy as a slave, Douglass wielded words with more fierce eloquence than I’d ever encountered. I’d been looking for history, but Douglass’s autobiography opened my mind to the beauty of language and the importance of reasoned argument to the pursuit of justice, and ultimately to the realization of self. For this I’m grateful to him, and while I’m not given to citing personal heroes, I make exception for Douglass. A few years ago I paid my respects at his stolidly prosaic grave in Rochester, New York.

Over a century and a half earlier on July 5th, 1852, Frederic Douglass appeared before the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society to present “The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro.” That’s right, July 5th. The date was his choice, for as he explained, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Douglass’s voice, unlike his words, is sadly lost to us now, but he was accounted one of America’s greatest orators, and his performance before the abolitionist group that day is legendary. So it was with no small excitement that I learned actor Fred Morsell, who has been performing his inspirational one-man show “Presenting Mr. Frederic Douglass” before audiences in the manner of Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight!” since 1988, had recorded this speech for TBM records. For those of us (like myself, to my regret) who have not been fortunate enough to see Mr. Morsell perform live, this recording offers a chance to experience one of Douglass’s most famous works as it was originally intended, in the grand tradition of 19th century oratory.

The CD begins with a banjo playing the refrain from “Acres of Clams” (Francis Henry, 1874), presumably in reference to the line “and I have been frequently sold”. Despite its apparent relevance, this post-civil war ballad of the Northwest doesn’t address slavery but the hardships of white settlers. While placing it before Douglass’s speech certainly invests the song with new significance, there’s no shortage of great anti-slavery ballads that might have been used. Admittedly, this is a minor historical quibble.

We are brought into the proceedings shortly after they’ve begun. A stately male voice thanks Reverend Raymond for his reading of the Declaration of Independence and introduces Miss Julia Griffiths, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery society. Griffiths takes the podium before the assembled crowd (the recording was conducted before a live audience), expressing her admiration for the founding fathers. This preamble contains a preponderance of words you would expect: great, magnificent, hero, patriot, heritage, freedom, sacred, genius, glorious, and of course, pride. Griffiths is so proud, in fact, that her grandiloquence nearly renders her a caricature. She proceeds to introduce Douglass with great fanfare.

Douglass, wise strategist that he is, takes the stage with humility. He is at pains to point out the weightiness of speaking about the 4th of July (“This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way for me”) and confess a nervousness that Morsell’s steady voice cleverly belies.

Douglass establishes a dual relationship to the nation he celebrates right from the beginning. Although he addresses his audience of “my fellow citizens” inclusively, he also invokes “your fathers” and “your nation” rather than “ours” with quiet firmness. Laying the groundwork for the argument to come, he persuasively frames the founding fathers as bold challengers of the status quo, champions of a radical vision who were ready to sacrifice every comfort. They were “dangerous men”, Morsell intones, lingering provocatively over the words. Morsell lends Douglass’s words increasing weight throughout this passage, audibly capitalizing key phrases and engraving them in his listeners’ minds. “The principles contained in that document are SAVING principles. STAND by those principles. Be TRUE to them.” Even though we know a counter-thrust is coming, it’s hard not to be moved by Morsell’s sonorous delivery of this tribute.

Then Douglass leaves the glories of the past behind. We reach the turning point of the speech as Morsell levels his voice with sober calculation: “My business, if I have any here today, is with the present.” There is a new current pulsing through Douglass’s rhetoric now. “Men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own,” Morsell states, going on to parody the slave traders who lay claim to Washington’s legacy even as they defile it. As with so many of Douglass’s pointed critiques, the broad import of this statement is sadly just as relevant today as when it was written. Morsell concludes in a frank whisper, “Alas it should be so, but so it is.”

Oratory is an art of persuasion, but it is equal parts theater, and at its finest, music as well. Morsell delivers Douglass’s words with the intelligent nuance they demand, his cadences sweeping from a righteous thunder that scours the flesh from your bones to burgeoning deliberation and everything in between.

Douglass patiently built his speech like a fortress: brick by brick, word by word. After erecting these battlements, Morsell stands atop them to unleash a former slave’s hard truth like a hail of arrows. “There is not a man under heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong – FOR HIM!” As Morsell’s voice reaches furious crescendo, he calls upon the elements themselves: “At a time like this light, fire, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. Not the gentle shower, but Thunder! Storm! Whirlwind and Earthquake!”

Then, like Zeus casting a thunderbolt, Morsell hits us with the full force of Douglass’s judgment:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I ANSWER; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers, hymns, sermons and thanksgivings are to him, mere bombast, fraud, and hypocrisy ? a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. Here in America, the home of the Declaration of Independence and a Bastion for Human Rights, you will see men and women reared like swine for the market.

It’s one of the most famous passages of the speech, and Morsell does it passionate justice. He does not, however, deliver precisely the same words that Douglass did:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy ? a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Morsell has edited Douglass’s speech, partly in the interest of time (the full text would last well over the length of a CD, Morsell’s version lasts 46 minutes), partly in the service of tempo and delivery. I can’t say I agree with all of Morsell’s choices: Douglass’s original concluding sentence to the paragraph above strikes me as more powerful, for example. But as any good actor does, Morsell makes his adaptation work. I think it fair to say that despite Morsell’s abridgments and artistic license, he remains true to the spirit of Douglass’s text.

For the remainder of the speech Morsell flays the mind with vivid imagery of the slave trade’s consequences, cracking his voice like a whip. He turns his unsparing eye on the collusion of the church, citing theologian and Presbyterian minister Albert Barnes, “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.” He rakes the fugitive slave law across the coals. Finally he concludes with human exhaustion, “My spirit wearies of such blasphemy.” But his final message is one of hope. “The doom of slavery is certain,” Douglass states, due to an inevitable, expanding globalization of knowledge that resonates deeply with his own life-long struggle for access to education. This passage sounds profoundly contemporary; you’d almost think he was praising the internet.

In closing, Morsell / Douglass offers a reverent farewell to his audience that is almost a prayer.

At the time Morsell made this recording he had already been playing Douglass for four years, and the passionate, critical intelligence driving that commitment illuminates his performance. While the world of theater is in many ways the world of quick studies, you can’t achieve this kind of unity between actor and material in the short term. I listened attentively at the beginning, but by the middle of Morsell’s rendition of Douglass’s speech I was riven by every word, subsumed in the enclosed universe created between audience and performer. As I said in the beginning, reading Douglass is transformative. Hearing him performed like this gives his words new immediacy and invests them with the living, vocal power they were intended to have.

As incredible as his escape from slavery and subsequent rise to success were, it is perhaps more remarkable that Douglass did not lose heart in America. Douglass believed that the Declaration of Independence was not an antique monument at which to lay flowers, but a testament that Americans of every race and creed are called to live every day, whatever the personal cost. He proved himself the truest of patriots by his willingness to condemn his country for its iniquities in order to save it from them. If we would honor the memory of one of our greatest citizens, we should take that lesson to heart this 4th (and 5th) of July.

Next week: I’ve posted this review early because I’ll be taking a short vacation next week. Expect Malleus to resume its regular schedule on July 11.

4 out of 10

A flawed curiosity, the Mind’s Eye production of Kafka’s surreal, tragicomic tale of the salesman-turned-cockroach is notable for a striking voice effect and an outstanding performance by Erik Bauersfeld. Listening to him, you’ll believe a cockroach can talk and shudder with disgust and sympathy. It’s a shame the rest of the cast doesn’t measure up.

From the short story “Die Verwandlung” by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915.

Adapted and directed by: Erik Bauersfeld

The Mind’s Eye, 1982.

Language: English.

Availability: Out of print and difficult to find. Try Ebay, Amazon.com sellers, or Abebooks.

Cassette, 40 minutes.

What will they say when they see me?
- Gregor Samsa

Well, what can they say? If they get upset then it’s no longer your problem, if they take it calmly then all you have to worry about is catching the 8 o’clock train.
- the Voice

Now that the company and its works have all but vanished, it’s hard to believe there was a time in the 1980s when The Mind’s Eye was one of America’s biggest audio drama producers. They had mainstream distribution through chains like Waldenbooks and catalogs like Wireless, and they published an expansive, ambitious catalog of adaptations of classic stories. Their flagship title was a 12 cassette production of The Lord of the Rings, which aired on NPR. Since the BBC drama wasn’t available Stateside for years, the Mind’s Eye version was the only game in town for American Tolkien-lovers. This was very fortunate for The Mind’s Eye, because their low-rent edition of the fantasy epic was much inferior to the BBC’s. (But if the idea of Sam Gamgee sounding like Smurfette appeals, by all means seek it out. Yes, they actually cast Lucille Bliss, the voice of Smurfette, as Sam.) Unfortunately, the same can be said about most of their output. The Mind’s Eye routinely produced mediocre work marked by low calibre performances.

Although I was already underwhelmed by the Mind’s Eye back in the 1980′s, I became intrigued by their decision to adapt Franz Kafka’s classic tale, The Metamorphosis. The story of salesman Gregor Samsa waking up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach seemed an unlikely choice for audio drama. So much of the story depends on narration, after all, since the protagonist is more fixated on family and duty than describing his strange condition.

But if anyone could pull it off, it would be writer / director / actor Erik Bauersfeld, who produced many adaptations of strange tales for his Black Mass radio series. Bauersfeld has had an extensive career in audio drama, anchored by a long tenure from 1962 to 2004 with Pacifica Radio’s KPFA in Berkeley, California. Much of his radio work is frustratingly difficult to get a hold of, since many of his works have never been published. Given my own interests in the German scene, I’m particularly intrigued by a crossover German / American series that he spearheaded called the H?rspiel/USA Project. (If anyone knows how to obtain copies, please let me know.) Most would probably recognize Bauersfeld for voicing Jabba the Hutt’s toadie Bib Fortuna and Arabic-amphibian Admiral Ackbar in the Star Wars films. Apparently Bauersfeld was also the first voice to be recorded for Yoda. ?(Bauersfeld has since informed me that although he was recorded for Yoda, a role he enjoyed because the character was a philosopher, Frank Oz was recorded first. ?I gather Bauersfeld’s version was more sage and less comic.)

Bauersfeld has worked closely with some of the best in the audio business, including sound design legend Randy Thom. Outside of his own work, Bauersfeld is notable for mentoring a young Tom Lopez (“Meatball Fulton” of ZBS fame). See Roger Gregg’s NATF interview with Lopez for more on the ZBS director’s relationship with Bauersfeld. Hats off to Bauersfeld for that. If only more elder statesmen of audio drama would follow his example and encourage proteges; too many seem content to whine narcissistically about the low quality of young writers and the dire future of the field. Holding the occasional “master class” is fine, but nothing beats sustained mentoring.

With a pedigree like that (and this bio is much abbreviated), you would expect Bauersfeld to turn in an excellent performance as Gregor Samsa. And he does. His nervous, hesitant voice captures Samsa’s guilt, self-effacement, and Kafkaesque anxieties about being the sole provider for his ungrateful family. Interestingly, Samsa is a composite character in this production. The sagely British Bernard Mayes plays “The Voice”, a blend of conscience, omniscient narrator, and interlocutor who accompanies Samsa throughout the play. In addition to providing description “the Voice” converses directly with Samsa, who takes it for granted. Purists might scoff, but “the Voice” proves to be an elegant solution to traditional narration. In fact, Bauersfeld and Mayes’ interactions are easily the highlight of the drama. The conversing personae effectively take us inside Samsa’s mind as he muddles through his new situation.

The third element in bringing Gregor Samsa to audio life is the remarkable effect used to process Bauersfeld’s voice, giving it a bizarre, chittering echo. Creating effective and truly unique “creature voices” is a surprisingly subtle art. For novices, lowering / raising pitches or adding a metallic reverb is enough to make something sound monstrous, but these tired devices generally produce homogeneous results. Managing to find that sweet spot between keeping an actor’s voice understandable and giving it a truly unique, alien quality is a difficult feat. The Metamorphosis manages it handily: Bauersfeld’s insectile Samsa sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before, at once repulsive and sympathetic.

Bauersfeld’s performance is the best thing going for this production. Unfortunately, things go rapidly downhill once the rest of the cast appears. Kafka’s tragicomic, surreal story presents a significant challenge for dramatic interpretation. Should it be played straight? As a horror piece? As a black comedy? The Mind’s Eye players opted to treat it as a melodrama. This works to a degree for Robert Elross, who manages to wring some rough comedy out of Samsa’s overbearing father. Kenna Hunt, Beth Sweeney, and Priscilla Alden fare less well. Hunt overacts every line as Gregor’s stressed out mother, and sister Grete’s (Sweeney) histrionic fits are forced and exaggerated. Alden oddly chose to give the maid a comically heavy German accent, even though the entire story presumably takes place in Germany and the rest of the cast speaks standard English. Alden’s character plays to the stereotype of Germans being obsessed with order and cleanliness (believe me, it’s no stereotype), and it’s awkward and heavy-handed. Frankly, the poor quality of the acting had me convinced I was listening to community theater sunday players. I was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that the professional supporting cast turns in a sloppy, amateurish performance.

Bauersfeld and Mayes bring across some of the pathos and dark humor of Kafka’s melancholy tale, but as soon as the drama steps beyond the salesman’s lonely room into the lives of his dysfunctional family, the dysfunctional cast turns it into farce. A flawed curiosity, The Metamorphosis might be worth a listen for Bauersfeld’s stand-out portrayal of Samsa if you can find an old copy in your library or get it cheap.

Next: Fred Morsell brings a classic speech to life in his rendition of Frederick Douglass’ “The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro.” (English) Tune in for the Malleus review of a true American classic written by one of the country’s greatest orators.

9 out of 10

An audio drama adaptation of Bram Stoker’s little-known prelude to his famous horror novel. The Good, the Bad, and the Vlad face off in one of old Germany’s forgotten valleys for the soul of a very foolish Englishman. Ironically, only the use of classical music mars Titania Medien’s otherwise classic production.

Adapted from the short story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker, published posthumously in Dracula’s Guest and other Weird Stories in 1914.

Written by: Marc Gruppe.

Directed by: Stephen Bosenius and Marc Gruppe.

Titania Medien, 2007.

Language: German.

Availability: In print. Draculas Gast can be purchased either singly or as part of Titania’s 4 CD box set of Dracula. Amazon.de is a good source for German-speaking U.S. citizens and Canadians, since they accept credit cards and ship to the U.S.A. and Canada. (Many German sellers do not.)

Over 45 minutes.

Try before you buy: A short excerpt featuring Jonathan Harker making his colossally stupid decision to tour a spooky, abandoned town on Walpurgisnacht can be heard at the link below.
Dracula’s Gast Homepage

Es ist Walpurgisnacht! Bedenken sie! Walpurgisnacht!

It’s Walpurgis’ Night! Think about it! Walpurgis’ Night!

- Johann the coachman, to an unbelieving Jonathan Harker

I’ll be frank: I’m tired of Dracula audio dramas. There have been plenty of English and German productions already, and I’d bet my not-very-sharp canine teeth that more are on the way. Sigh. The only thing less original than adapting Dracula is reenacting, “modernizing”, or parodying Orson Welles’ one trick pony, The War of the Worlds. It’s been done, folks. Hell’s bells, even I did one for my local station back when I was a teenager. I have nothing against amateurs doing War of the Worlds riffs – I have nothing against amateurs doing whatever they want, so long as they don’t charge for it – but for professionals, it’s well past time to move on.

But Dracula’s Guest? Now this is more like it. Bram Stoker’s neglected little gem relates the story of what happened to Jonathan Harker en route to his fateful first meeting with Count Dracula. Some scholars believe this short story was supposed to be the first chapter of Stoker’s famous novel, others disagree. Titania Medien has sided with the first group, making Dracula’s Gast the opening act of its Dracula adaptation. In doing so they’ve finally given this short, atmospheric work its due.

Stopping in Munich on his way to Transylvania, Jonathan Harker (Simon Jaeger) decides to take a day off to enjoy the German countryside. Innkeeper Dellbrueck (Heinz Ostermann) nervously assents, assigning Harker his faithful coachman Johann (Christian Rode), and urging that he return before night falls. There’s a hint of snow in the air, you see. It also happens to be Walpurgisnacht, that Pagan holiday when the dead rise from their graves.

Things go well until Harker notices a charming path leading down into a picturesque valley. Enticed, Harker asks his coachman to take the detour. The affable Johann strangely refuses. When Harker presses him, the coachman tells him that the trail leads to an abandoned town. It seems the former residents fled seeking a new home where “the Living live and the Dead remain dead and not something frightfully different.”

Harker responds with a young man’s impetuousness and an Englishman’s skepticism. He dismisses Johann’s backwoods superstitions, saying he’ll tackle the valley on foot and return in his own good time. Reluctantly the coachman takes his leave, asking God and Mary to watch over Harker. Someone is indeed watching over Harker, but it isn’t God. A dark silhouette observes him from afar, and a strange white wolf tracks his every move through the valley.

Of course, things get worse from there in this cautionary tale. The weather turns, and the sky darkens with the onset of a sudden winter storm. Harker is haunted by disembodied female laughter. Seeking shelter from the cold, he makes his way into the abandoned town and is inexorably driven into the mausoleum of Countess Dolingen. Her malevolent presence teases and drives him on, and Harker seems doomed to reawaken the Countess and become her first meal. But Harker is working for an extraordinary patron, and Dracula is not one to cross.

Titania Medien has set out to create the definitive hoerspiel library of horror classics through its Gruselkabinett line, of which Dracula’s Gast is the 16th release. I’m fond of the line for its high standards and its willingness to tackle titles that are off the beaten path (like Dracula’s Gast) in addition to more well-known material. Although not every production has been stellar, Dracula’s Gast has all the hallmarks of Gruselkabinett’s strongest releases.

The casting is rock-solid, filled in the German manner with actors known and advertised by the American and British Hollywood stars they dub. The CD’s back cover tells us that the all-star cast of Dracula’s Gast features the German voices of Heath Ledger, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Christopher Lee, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johansson. Simon Jaeger (the Heath Ledger guy) gives Jonathan Harker, a vanilla character at the best of times, the bravado and vulnerability of youth. This is really Harker’s story, saved from being a monologue only by numerous flashback scenes that detail the origin of his business trip and his relationship with Mina Murray (Tanja Geke). Everyone performs well in these supporting roles, but Juergen Thormann’s (the Michael Caine guy) Peter Hawkins was particularly memorable for the naturalness of his fatherly warmth for Harker. Joachim Hoeppner’s courtly, hard voice makes him a fine Dracula, but those wishing to hear the Count in action would be better served by Gruselkabinett’s full Dracula adaptation. The Count’s appearance in Dracula’s Gast accomplishes all it needs to, but fans are duly warned that it is brief.

If the production has one flaw, it is its use of classical music. Bosenius and Gruppe opt to use Paul Dukas’ well-known “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” as a leitmotif, weaving snatches of it throughout the drama, right up to the famous BUM BUM BUM BUM! of the finale. The supernatural aspect of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” would seem well suited to a play about vampires, and Paul Dukas is almost certainly a more accomplished composer than Titania could have hired. So why doesn’t it work?

Audio dramatists would do well to remember that music is a storytelling device, not just an atmosphere generator. This is particularly the case for works like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, which was written as a musical adaptation of Goethe’s 1797 poem, “Der Zauberlehrling”. The true genius of “Apprentice” is how Dukas caught the spirited, macabre humor of Goethe’s poem and put it into his music. Walt Disney’s Fantasia segment with Mickey Mouse didn’t put any comedy into the “Apprentice” that wasn’t already right there in the musical notation. Quite the opposite; Mickey’s battle with the brooms works because it draws its jaunty horror straight from Dukas’ score.

Unfortunately, Goethe’s / Dukas’ humor really has no place in the humorless Dracula’s Gast. Placing the wry concluding beats of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” at the end of Stoker’s tale makes it sound as though Bosenius and Gruppe are winking at the audience, turning the macabre tale into a weird jest. Since the dark events of Dracula’s Gast immediately precede those of Dracula, a chill of foreboding would have been more appropriate. Gruppe and Bosenius didn’t overlook this problem entirely, because they used dark, synthesized tracks for the play’s more overtly sinister scenes. While this original music is aesthetically unremarkable, unlike Dukas’ famous work it fits the story Dracula’s Gast actually tells. In short, Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is musically superior but dramatically out of context.

I’m hardly the first person to say this: many German fans have complained about the jarringly inappropriate use of classical music in the Gruselkabinett line. And in all fairness, Dracula’s Gast is more successful in its implementation of classical music than other releases have been. In Titania’s Dracula adaptation, for example, the vampiric resurrection of Lucy Westenra is accompanied by Claude Debussy’s 1894 Pr?lude ? l’apr?s-midi d’un faune, which, like “Apprentice”, was based on a poem (by St?phane Mallarm?, c. 1876) with a very different theme. Although both works concern supernatural creatures and have sexual overtones, the horror of Lucy’s return fits poorly with the benign wonder of Debussy’s light reverie. Quite simply, the script and score tell different, incompatible tales. Rather than lending their dramas a patina of class, Gruselkabinett’s line-wide use of classical music feels unnecessary, distracting, and ingratiating.

Classical music aside, ultimately Dracula’s Gast succeeds on sheer atmosphere. Stoker’s tale is as much about Winter’s sudden power to transform the familiar into the foreign as it is about the undead. As such, Dracula’s Gast is genuinely “unheimlich”. This German word literally means “un-home-like” (as homes are what are most familiar to us, and most disturbing when they are rendered alien), but it is generally translated in English as “uncanny”. In the later pulp circles of Lovecraft this kind of story would be coined “the weird tale”. Dracula’s Gast may not have the same strong characterization, clever plotting, or even stark chills of Stoker’s more famous novel, but it still appeals to our terror of what is both ever-present and ever-strange: the land of the dead we coexist with every day.

Later this week (sorry for the delay): What would be an even more unlikely, uncanny audio drama adaptation than Dracula’s Gast? How about Erik Bauersfeld’s 1982 production of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis? (English)

This?week Malleus focuses on the emergence of explicit?sex in two mainstream audio drama serials, (insofar as a mainstream exists in this field), one German, one American.? These productions go way beyond the light eroticism that flits through Tom Lopez’s ouevre or the bawdy puns?of the Firesign Theater.? Now that public radio drama is shifting towards private audio drama, is this new?frankness?a sign of things to come?

This article contains no explicit images – that’s kind of the point – and?isn’t going to offend any rational adult.? I don’t recommend allowing children to read it.?

For most of audio drama?s history sex has barely been mentioned.? Hardly surprising given that audio drama started?out as?radio drama,?broadcast to the general audience of?1940?s and 50?s America.??Not exactly the most artistically liberated period for the airwaves or the country in general:? these were people who felt morally threatened by Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, for goodness’ sake.

I can only think of one simulated sex scene from a drama that aired over public radio ? the Android Sisters? song-story ?Sss-X Minus One? (the title is a play on the?classic 1950?s sci-fi radio show X Minus One) from ZBS productions? 1982 sci-fi serial, Ruby.? This 3-minute scene consisted of the two sisters coyly asking listeners to touch them ?here? and ?there?, then moaning suggestively.? No dirty words, nothing literally described, but the meaning was clear.? And this was of course the punchline ? at the end the sisters reveal that the tale wasn?t about sex at all, but an illustration of how easy it is to use sexual suggestion to plant manipulative images in your head.? The song was a little Zen koan about the nature of advertising.

There are probably a few other exceptions, but by and large audio drama has perforce been a chaste medium.? Not just in ?prudish? America, either:? it?s the same story in Germany, and so far as I?m aware, Britain and Canada.? If the French had had a thriving audio drama culture to go with their cinema and bandes dessin?es I?m sure they would have invented sound effects for bobbing breasts and rising erections.? But since they don?t, they haven?t.?

Nowadays audio drama production has shifted from public broadcasting to private companies in the U.S.A. and some other parts of the world, and with that shift taboos and FCC restrictions have lifted.? Explicit aural sex is beginning to make itself heard in two audio drama markets for the first time at roughly the same time: Germany and the United States.

In Germany the first mainstream audio drama I?m aware of to feature actors simulating sex (mostly heavy breathing, with the sound of clothes tearing) is Don Harris, Psycho-Cop 02:? Der Club der H?llens?hne, released last year.? The sex scene is disturbing not so much for the act itself?as its Oedipal overtones, given that it takes place between the hero and an ageless, mysterious woman who tells him she was ?almost his mother? (she wasn?t and they?re not related, but still).?

Don Harris is the newest creation of author Jason Dark (Helmut Rellergerd), whose John Sinclair: Edition 2000 series has been a cornerstone of the German audio drama revival and is still going strong.? Since Don Harris, like Sinclair, is yet another occult detective in a hoerspiel field overcrowded with them, Dark and Random House have played up the ?mature? angle to set Harris apart and appeal to an older, presumably more sophisticated audience.? With only 2 releases out the series is still quite young, and it remains to be seen if sex scenes will help Don Harris find and keep an audience or not.?

(Dark?s John Sinclair also spawned a lowbrow parody serial rife with sexual puns called Jac Longdong.? Imagine if someone created an audio serial riff on Jack Flanders called, say, Jack Fellatio or something.? Longdong actually precedes Harris, but since it is more about bawdy humor than simulated sex it falls outside of this discussion.? Besides, no force on earth could compel me to listen to a series with that title, much less?analyze it.)

In the US, sex in audio drama remains rare, with one very large exception:? Graphic Audio.?

Graphic Audio puts out a large array of dramatized audiobooks,?most of which fall under the broad category of ?Men?s adventure?:? science fiction, westerns, action, military, espionage, and post-apocalyptic to name a few.? (They’re now starting to release “Women’s adventure” titles like Rogue Angel?and?The Serrano Legacy?with female protagonists as well.)? Some of their series carry a ?Mature? label, and for good reason.? Graphic Audio prides itself on doing unabridged performances of pulpy paperbacks, and when said works contain sex scenes they don?t cut or shy away from them.? When it comes to sex (and violence) Graphic Audio lives up to its name.?

I was surprised by the oral sex scene that popped up in the middle of Deathlands #45:? Starfall, complete with romantic music, explicit narration, moans, and yes, even suggestive sound effects.? That’s right, sound effects.? It?s more than a little amusing to hear Richard Rohan, who has the classic announcer?s voice you?ve heard on countless advertisements, suddenly start describing the state of the hero?s stimulated ?manhood? in his neutral, dulcet tones.? Deathlands releases often have at least one sex scene.? You can hear one of the tamer ones, with Rohan?s narration, here: http://www.graphicaudio.net/p-61-52-zero-city.aspx.

And so far as I know, that?s it.? German and American producers are still testing the waters.? But after years of being banned from the airways, graphic sex is beginning to emerge?in private sector audio dramas as a minor but significant contributing element.?

But does aural sex sell?? I have no idea. Listening to simulated sex does about as much for me as the prospect of watching cartoon characters get it on:? nothing.? Of course, my lack of interest hasn?t stopped a large pornographic animation industry from making a lot of money, so I?m probably not the best person to ask.?

The truth is that if aural sex sells even half as well as its visual counterpart, it’s here to stay.?

Next week:??Before the events of Dracula, did the world’s most notorious vampire save Jonathan Harker’s life?? Malleus takes a close look at Bram Stoker’s little-known prequel to his classic tale, as dramatized by Titania Medien, in a review of Gruselkabinett 16:? Dracula’s Gast.? (Dracula’s Guest, German)

9 out of 10

As the buoy dips and water closes over your head for the final time, you reach a terrifying conclusion:? Steven Thomas Oney is one hell of a writer.

Written and directed by Stephen Thomas Oney

Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater, 1987

Availability:? Mp3 download from Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater’s home website, www.crmt.com.? At $4.99 it’s a bargain.

55 minutes.

Try before you buy:? An mp3 excerpt of The Buoy can be found here -http://www.ccrmt.com/backstage_audio_clips.html.

Language:? English.

Syzygy:? the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (such as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system.??

- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

The moon was my murderer!

- Edward Wolcott

A lesser writer would have cut it short.?

For six and a half minutes?announcer Floyd Pratt’s salty, husky voice engages you in polite conversation?while he steers out from Vineyard Bay into the Woods Hole Passage off the coast of Massachusetts.? Mournful foghorns sound in the distance as?his?boat’s small motor?putters amiably through the dark waters.? Pratt entertains with nautical?trivia and nods to the various landmarks that you pass on the short voyage.??He savors the?Native American names of the Elizabeth Islands:? Nonamesset, Uncatena, Naushon, Pasque, Nashawena, Cuttyhunk.? It’s all very?pleasant until you pass Devil’s Foot Island?and begin to near buoy #3.??Then Pratt cuts the motor and?tells?you there’s something he wants?you to see.? Another boat approaches, and some men unload a large sack.? A disturbingly?large sack that thrashes and strains.? Now they’re binding it to the buoy . . .

Writer Steven Thomas Oney’s?gradual approach distracts you with Pratt’s?maritime charisma?while it sets the scene, drawing you inexorably into the story.? By the time?Pratt’s?observations?take a macabre turn, the narrative trap has already sprung.? You’re hooked, and it’s far too late to pull out now.? This is how you grab an audience – young audio dramatists, take note.

The Buoy’s premise is easily summarized.? One evening Edward Wolcott (George McConville) finds himself stranded in the town of Woods Hole after missing?his ferry.? Wolcott makes the best of?a lonely night?until he is attacked and spirited from his hotel room by unknown assailants.? They put?him on a motor boat and tie him to buoy #3, and Wolcott’s night in hell begins.

The Buoy?seamlessly adapts Edgar Allen Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum to the foggy shores of New England.? Technically speaking, The Pit and the Pendulum?was not a mystery, and neither is Oney’s adaptation.? But Poe was the inventor of the detective story, and even his horror tales often contained a large measure of?ratiocinative logic.? For Poe’s?narrator in the pit, drawing rational conclusions about the nature of his imprisonment?was his only means?of staving off panic and insanity.? As the bladed pendulum swung ever lower, that thin veneer of rationality became harder and harder to maintain.? This sea-sawing battle between reasoned investigation?and blind terror?made?The?Pit and the Pendulum?a psychological tour-de-force.?

In Poe’s detective stories reason triumphs:? in his horror stories, it fails.? It’s a lesson Oney applies to great effect in The Buoy.? Bound and helpless, Wolcott’s able mind races, noting every detail of his environment and drawing a measure of comfort from each small deductive victory.? Oney?avoids?making Wolcott?too?clever or knowledgeable by having him narrate the ordeal?many years later, after he has had ample time to?research the circumstances of his ordeal.? In this way Oney is able to credibly lay out?a fiendishly elaborate deathtrap, describing the?shifting tides, the buoy’s movements,?and that strange term syzygy with a fastidious attention to detail?that would make Poe proud.?

Although The Buoy has a cast of six, Mr.?Wolcott’s?monologue dominates.? Fortunately actor George McConville is more than up to the task of carrying this story all by himself.??His understated?narration is subtly shaded with emotion,?navigating the twilight realm between?hopeful reasoning?and blind panic.? Like Pratt, McConville’s voice carries an authentic?New Englander’s cadences,?the kind?of voice Stephen King would kill to have?read one of his audiobooks.? This is?the rich, rooted accent of a true local that no actor can fake.? Listening to him made this old?son of Massachusetts?acutely homesick.

There are some minor issues with The Buoy’s cast and Oney’s otherwise?excellent script.? While The Buoy boasts strong performances in general, not all of the players muster McConville’s gravitas. ?Thom Dutton gives Wolcott’s companion David Halpole a young man’s charmingly?awkward enthusiasm, but?he doesn’t convey shock or horror believably.? Frankly a part of me wished Oney had written The Buoy as a straight monologue.? And while I’m not averse to supernatural elements in audio drama – far from it, as regular readers of this column know well?-?in this case the semi-mystical resolution of?The Buoy?detracts from?the story’s?effectiveness as a straight thriller.? And that’s a shame, since it’s one of the best thrillers I’ve heard, or for that matter, read or watched.

Mark Birmingham’s strong sound design and supporting music rounds out an intensely atmospheric package.? His synthesized chords channel the low base of a foghorn, painting an aural?panorama of muted greys.? Everything from the ticking of a hotel clock to the tidal churn of water around the buoy have a crystal clarity that invests them with metaphoric as well as illusory power.? The most impressive effect is the deep groaning of the buoy’s?anchor, which?sounds like an iron Leviathan stirring in the depths.? It’s easily one of the most terrifying sounds I’ve heard in an audio drama.??After this review was posted Steve Oney wrote to tell me how this effect was created:? “The chilling sound of the buoy anchor chain was made from a garbage?dumpster on rollers that had a squeaky lid that Mark Birmingham and I then processed by computer.”? Thanks for giving us some insight into the sound design process, Steve.? Highly inventive and effective.? Cumulatively, the boat motors, bells, and clanking buoy?meld with McConville’s voice and Oney’s knowing description to create a truly immersive experience.? While other?productions?might overwhelm you with?busier soundscapes, few can?transport you to a more convincingly or authentically?realized acoustic locale than The Buoy’s offshore New England.?

All in all, The Buoy stands head and shoulders above the innumerable mediocre “tales of terror” that clutter radio / audio drama’s long history.? Do yourself a favor and download this neglected classic, turn off the lights, and lose yourself for an hour in?the chilling fog of the Woods Hole Passage.

Next week:? Aural sex?

6 out of 10

Is Stephen King the Garrison Keillor of horror?

Head to Head: King vs. KeillorWere they separated at birth? Was Keillor put up for adoption in Minnesota and King sent to live with relatives in Maine? Or are they inverse doppelgangers from mirror universes? (Notice the spooky way they part their hair on opposite sides.)All joking aside, King and Keillor have one significant difference. Yes, just one. I’m reminded of a couplet by the German pop band Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung:Ich bin eine Mischung, die ist ziemlich lecker, aus Albert Einstein und Arnold Schwarzenegger.? So weit, so gut, doch das Dumme ist nur – ich hab’ Schwarzeneggers Hirn und von Einstein die Figur. I’m a very tasty mix of Albert Einstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger. So far so good, but the stupid thing is – I have Schwarzenegger’s brain and Einstein’s body.

Folksy, regional, populist attraction to “the common man” in their work. Neither one knows how to dress. Castle Rock and Lake Wobegon.
Phenomena of authors reading their own work. Geibel?s complaint that they aren?t any good. Suggestion of intimacy?? Historical value?? Presumed access to true meaning of the text in the writer?s inflections?? Lots of professional actors have read King ? so what is the virtue of King himself reading?? No actor will ever have as intimate a connection with a text as the man or woman who wrote it, but not every author is a good reader. King is a great storyteller.

Book published in 1991. Music dates it to that period. King’s novels have always incorporated a heap of brand names to be contemporary – these will someday render them of the past.

Characters – Stereotypes become archetypes become three dimensional characters when Sheriff Pangborn arrives. Grief makes King’s characters real. (Humourous woman who walks into store with t-shirt.)

King – a raconteur. His stories are made to be read.

Do you want a big town actor playing at a small town voice, or a genuinely small town author?

The small town politeness. Leland Gaunt, the polite villain – started with Dracula?? He has NO motivation (well, amusement. He’s lived a long time and is bored.)?- his character is merely a veneer of polite salesmanship over evil. Why King’s villains resonate?- our lives are at the whim of abstract forces that may seem to have an independent malevolent spirit – the market, corporations, inflation, recession. For many of us these things are more real than the close, neighborly relationships depicted in King’s novel.

King villains are barely characters. They are malevolent?forces in human form.

Horror novels thrive on small towns. Not because they represent perfect close-knit communities waiting to be ripped apart, but because they represent communities that are close enough to be dysfunctional on a personal level. Through horror novels like Needful Things neighbors know each other well enough to inspire real love and hate. The anonymous horrors of city – or, increasingly, of present-day small town life in America (disconnected / internet / mail order / strip mall) – don’t seem quite as extraordinary. We approach these small towns with nostalgic yearning and trepidation.

The Great American Novel. of Greed.

“Perhaps all the really special things I sell aren’t what they appear to be. Perhaps they are actually gray things with only one remarkable property – the ability to take the shapes of those things which haunt the dreams of men and women.”? He paused, then added thoughtfully:? “Perhaps they are dreams themselves.”

- Leland Gaunt

“In the movies you get a lot of pining and precious little grief. Because grief is too real. Grief is . . . “? He let go of her arms, slowly picked up a dish and began to wipe it dry. “Grief is brutal.”

- Sheriff Alan Pangborn

Wordy, but words don’t seem wasted. structured.

Horse trading. Psychology of shopping, bargaining. Knows that pretense of Yankee frugality masks a craving for bargains.

But doesn?t writer?s spirit and personality often infuse tone of voice as well as text?? Consider the wide-eyed, innocent wonder that comes through Ray Bradbury?s wonderfully boyish reading of The Martian Chronicles.

The eyes have it. Stephen King?s odd and unpretentious voice, like his odd and unpretentious stories, is weirdly compelling. To put it in terms of one of King?s favorite phrases, repeated in countless novels and stories, both his squashed, Cheshire-cat face and his thin, unimposing voice look / feel wrong for the ?King of Horror?. Many of King?s jeans and t-shirt photos, his love of rock and roll, his heavily colloquial writing style all scream ?hey, I?m a normal guy!?? but the blank intensity of those small eyes in his too-broad face mean we?ll never believe him. To paraphrase another of King?s favorite lines, they seize hold of the imagination by dint of dogged persistence and force of personality and ?rewrite the script?. ?This isn?t in the script? ? some guy wandered in from the street and ambled up to the podium while the author was indisposed in the bathroom. A guy who, by the looks of him, really doesn?t belong anywhere. And just that quality has made King belong everywhere.

A master storyteller reading a classic King story.

Knows his Maine accent and regional personalities. In the manner of Lovecraft (who continues to influence his writing to this day ? see Duma Key), a horror writer with strong local roots in the most haunted region of the country, New England.

Leland Gaunt ? King?s best villains compelling, Gaunt?s early and strong presence in the story puts King?s effective villainy front and center.? King’s villains are all the same. Old, manipulative, know things they shouldn’t about people’s private darkness, reflect a pessimistic view that at base humans are vile, corrupted creatures. For Lovecraft, mankind was better off not knowing about the true forces of the universe, which were align, malign, and indifferent to man. For King, for whom Lovecraft has been a major inspiration (in this book “Yog-Sothoth Rules”, “Plains of Leng”) the horror is that mankind may be better off not knowing about or acknowledging his own true nature:? Venal, selfish, grasping.

Any chance that Gaunt is meant to be a Man of Leng?

Dracula – the polite villain, courtliness channelled through Gaunt’s storekeeper’s small town friendliness. Mesmerism.

Introduction ? a local gabber fills you in on the simmering relationships and half-truths of small town life. Characters are cartoonish exaggerations, but they ring true regardless since many American small-town personalities ARE cartoonish.

Takes aim at consumerism. (A theme you?d sooner expect from Roger Gregg or Tom Lopez.)

7 out of 10

An?audio drama?adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s beat love letter to the Shadow, crusader of dimestore novels and old time radio.? If you share Kerouac?s love for the?dark corners?of boyhood fantasy, you could do worse than meander through?the alleys of Lowell?with his jazz angel, Dr. Sax.?

Mwee Hee Hee Ha Ha Ha!

Written by:? Jack Kerouac

Produced by:? Jim Sampas

Music by:? John Medeski

Illustrated by:? Richard Sala

Gallery Six, 2003

2 CDs and an illustrated screenplay in a handsomely designed fold-out box.

Availability:? Out of print, but easy to find at heavily discounted prices at the time of this writing.? Try Amazon or Abebooks.

Try before you buy:? On October 31, 2003 NPR ran a?Bob Edwards feature?on Dr. Sax that featured excerpts from the production.? You can listen to it here:? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1486389.

Language:? English.

I’ll be dingblasted – the universe disposes of its own evil!

- Dr. Sax

The back cover of the 1994 Grove Press edition of Dr. Sax quotes?this line from a?1959 New York Times review:? “Kerouac’s peculiar genius infects every page.”? Here’s another?line from?that review they didn’t cite:? “Dr. Sax is not only bad Kerouac; it is a bad book.”??There’s a nice lesson in selective quoting.? Critics never?embraced Dr. Sax with the same enthusiasm as On the Road, dismissing it as garbled juvenalia.? But the book has its fans, including Kerouac’s nephew Jim Sampas, who discovered an unpublished screenplay version of the story and decided to publish it as an audio drama.? And why not???Deeply inspired by?the Shadow and dime-store adventures, Dr. Sax is rooted in the era and ethos of old time radio.

The story of Dr. Sax is a phantasmagoric mish-mash of syrupy childhood memoir and wild romp through pulp apocalypse.? Kerouac?s youthful alter-ego Jacky Duluoz prowls the streets of Lowell, Massachusetts as the ?Black Thief?, stealing his friends? toys and leaving?cryptic calling cards.? The enigmatic Dr. Sax skirts the boundaries of Jacky?s imagination, blessing the boy?s mischief.??After Jacky is exposed and his masquerade as the Black Thief brought to an end, Dr. Sax?steps from the shadows?to pull Jacky into his phantasmagoric realm.??It’s?a world?filled with?vampires, wizards, gnomes, and the embodiment of evil itself, the Great World Snake that sleeps beneath nearby Snake Castle.? The Wizard Faustus intends to awaken the Great World Snake from its slumber and plunge the world into darkness, and only the heroic alchemist Dr. Sax stands in his way.? Although the story veers sharply from golden childhood memoir to the end of the world, Kerouac?s jangling, rhythmic prose somehow weaves it all together.? As Kerouac writes, ?Memory and dream are intermixed in this mad universe.???So Jacky?s happy childhood is strangely haunted, and Dr. Sax?s Gothic realm is at once perilous and innocent.?

That’s not to say the story is entirely coherent.? Portions of the?tale and many of the characters seem pointless:? there is a subplot involving “Dovist reformers”, for example, that goes nowhere.??But Dr. Sax sweeps you through?the cul-de-sacs?of its?meandering plotline with?an infectious,?boyish?verve, transforming narrative?dead ends into picaresque escapades.?

At it’s best, Kerouac’s prose?channels the beginnings of philosophy through?Jacky’s young and grasping mind.? Consider?his complaint?in the face of?mortality:? “Why can’t we have another, why can’t we have some more, why do we have to go through all this?”?These half-formed thoughts from a child?run as true and deep as Hamlet’s “Alas, poor Yorick!”.

Jim Sampas? cast is unlikely, imperfect, and uniquely fitting.? Poets and musicians, many of whom knew Kerouac in life,?make up its core, supported by actors in minor roles.? Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead performs Dr. Sax with noble gusto and a touch of humor, bellowing fractured wisdom.? He plays this more philosophical version of the Shadow to perfection and gives his ultimate failure touching humanity.? Rock musician Graham Parker and singer Kate Pierson (the B-52?s) each steal the show in all-too-short appearances as merrily sly Oscar Wilde clone Amadeus Baroque and effusively sinister Vamp Contessa, respectively.? Baroque has my favorite line from the play – and there are many, many good ones:? “Simply . . . Divine!? It’s so refreshing . . . We need any kind of revival, my dear, because you know it’s got great yoiky elements of Coney Island Christian in it . . . “? The late poet Robert Creeley?smoothes over?Kerouac’s choppy?stage directions and scene descriptions with his grandfatherly voice.? Since Creeley’s lines were intended to provide stage direction for a film?rather than be spoken as narration in an audio drama, be warned that?they take some getting used to.? Ultimately it is poet / musician Jim Carroll who breathes life into the play as Jacky Duluoz past and present, savoring the rhythm of Kerouac?s words as he rolls them off his tongue.? The swoops and dives of his riffing tie the story together and unleash its beat texture.?

You?re going to have to suffer to get to the good stuff though, as the first half of Dr. Sax showcases its weakest performances.? It isn?t easy for grown men to play young boys convincingly (contrary to popular belief in the animation industry, women don’t do it well either), and Bill Janovitz (Dicky), John Keegan (GJ), and Ellis Paul (Lousy) don?t pull it off?with their falsettos.? As difficult as it is to find decent child actors, I think Sampas made a real mistake in not casting actual children?for these roles.? And amidst the rich?hues of the children?s Lowell accents the voice of Ma, played by Kristina Wacome, has all the colorless,?sweet neutrality?of a television advertisement.? It doesn?t help that Kerouac gave?her the most insipid lines of the play.

In many ways, this production stands and falls more as a reading or ?poetry slam? than a dramatic performance.? In the accompanying screenplay Sampas writes,??To record readings and music we seldom went beyond the second or third take, and in fact used mainly first and warm-up takes for the final cut.?? Like it or not, this is fully evident.? Several players stumble through lines, seemingly encountering them for the first time.? Poet and long time Kerouac defender Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a cackling?delight as the reedy, scheming Dr. Faustus, and?his final tirade against Dr. Sax is hilarious.? But he trips over so many words that the brio of his performance is muted.? Granted, there is an argument to be made that this rough quality suits Kerouac?s improvisational style.? Listeners will have to decide for themselves whether?it works, but those expecting polished delivery?are going to?be disappointed.? Despite all the lost opportunities, however, there are moments when everything clicks and the text soars.?

Many of those moments happen when jazz musician John Medeski?s accompanying score kicks into high gear.? Whether?drumming the surging Merrimack river?into?life with a frantic trap-set or?breathing period spookiness into?a graveyard with a warbling organ, Medeski?s score plays alongside Kerouac?s words as an equal partner.? Best of all are the scenes where Medeski?s bluesy saxophone plays counterpoint to Jim Carroll?s rapping, telling its own syncopated story.? The effect is magical, like hearing two separate tales told at once that somehow jive into?simultaneous clarity.

The CDs come with Kerouac?s unabridged screenplay of Dr. Sax, lavishly illustrated by alternative comics artist Richard Sala.? Sala has an impressive body of neo-pulp Gothic graphic novels to his name, including the phantasmagoric Mad Night and The Chuckling Whatsit, both of which I highly recommend.? He?s currently working on Delphine, a creepy re-visioning of?Snow White which boasts some of his strongest work to date.? In the Dr. Sax screenplay Sala?s pen and ink drawings use Caligari angles and sly wit to bring out Kerouac?s playfully haunted sensibilities, arguably outshining the audio production.? All in all, for lovers of Kerouac or just good illustration, Sala makes the screenplay worth the price of admission all by itself.? Sala illustrated the CD box as well and did a damn fine job:? this is one of the most atmospheric, alluring?packages I’ve seen in awhile.? The curious can check out Sala’s work at www.richardsala.com.

There?s no denying the passion or intelligence producer Jim Sampas brought to this project.? Even if the final product is uneven, many of his casting, music, and design choices were frankly brilliant.? If he?d had an extra day to rehearse and record, this production would be a modern?beat classic.? As it stands, those willing to listen through the frequent incoherence of Kerouac?s baroque script and its sometimes stilted execution will start to hear the?music in it.? If you share Kerouac?s love for the shadows of boyhood fantasy, you could do worse than meander through Lowell?s alleys with his jazz angel, Dr. Sax.?

Next week:? Learn the secrets of syzygy in Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater’s The Buoy, a frightening maritime tribute to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum.? (English)

10?out of 10

Lausch’s adaptation of R. A. Salvatore’s?Forgotten Realms?novel carves a bold new?niche for dark fantasy into Germany’s burgeoning?audio drama market.??A tight script, outstanding performances, and rich atmosphere?make?Der Dritte Sohn?what most?h?rspiele?only claim to be:? atemberaubend. (Breathtaking.)

Die Saga von Dunkelelf 1 – Der Dritte Sohn

(Saga of the Dark Elf 1 – the Third Son)

Adapted and directed by G?nter Merlau?from a story by R. A. Salvatore.

Lausch, 2006.? www.merlausch.de

1 CD, approximately 70 minutes.

Availability:? In print.

Language:? German.

Try before you buy:? Click the headphones on the Lausch homepage?to hear Drizzt?s mother determine his future.? http://www.merlausch.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=21.

Nie zierte ein Stern dieses Land,
noch sendete die Sonne ihre w?rmenden Strahlen hieher.
Niemals wurde der Laut eines Vogels vernommen.
Nichts herrscht als tiefe ahnungsvolle Stille,
und das tosenden rauschen der Schwarzen Ruhe.
Dies ist nicht die Welt des Lichts.?
Dies ist die Unterwelt,
Verborgen unter der Oberfl?che der vergessenen Reiche.

No star ever graced this land,
Nor has the sun sent its warming beams here.?
Birdsong has never been heard.
Nothing holds dominion but deep, ominous quiet,
and the thundering roar of the Black Silence.
This is not the world of Light.
This is the Underworld,
hidden?beneath the surface of the Forgotten Realms.?

- Drizzt Do’Urden,?opening monologue?(my translation)

Way back when Dungeons and Dragons?was first being cobbled together from bits of H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and J.R.R. Tolkien,?the Dark Elves called Drow stood out as a strikingly original creation.? A decadent, psychopathic branch of “good” forest-dwelling Elves, the cthonic Drow were defined by their?sadistic matriarchal society.? There’s a disturbingly?chauvinist?subtext?to this fictional culture, as the Drow’s underworld setting, evil outlook, and?female-dominated?governance all smack of inverting the “natural order”, i.e. the “righteous” world of male?rule.? I have to wonder if D&D’s creators had overbearing mothers.?

In spite?(or perhaps because?) of their?suspiciously misandrist society, tales of the Drow have produced many colorful characters with viciously seductive bite.? The late Gary Gygax gave the Drow?D&D’s most memorable villain in woman-headed spider goddess Lolth, a giant?Arachne returned from Hades to?ensnare and devour?men’s souls.? There’s genius in the name Gygax chose (a corruption of the apocryphal Lillith?), as its sound vividly evokes the goddesses’ virulent?corpulence.? Try saying it out loud.? The nauseating way the word forces you to roll your tongue?actually feels unclean.

Author R. A. Salvatore gave the Drow?the anti-hero Drizzt do’Urden, a?young male striken with?conscience in a society devoid of it.? Drizzt’s name, which sounds like pissing against a wall, wasn’t quite?as brilliant as Lolth’s.? Nor was Salvatore’s?creation as original as Gygax’s dark goddess:? the solipsistic and decadent?city of Menzoberranzan bore more than passing?resemblance to Michael Moorcock’s?solipsistic?and decadent Dragon Isle of Melnibon?, and silver-haired, purple-eyed iconoclast?Drizzt owed a significant debt to white-haired, red-eyed?iconoclast?Elric.? But Salvatore parted company with Moorcock when he took the most powerful and disturbing elements of Drow matriarchal?culture and wove them into a socio-political tapestry nearly as rich and complex as that of Frank Herbert’s Dune.? Moorcock’s Melnibon? was never much more than an?orientalist?scaffolding to offset?Elric’s noble character; the politics and feuds of Salvatore’s Menzoberranzan made Drow society as?compelling as Drizzt himself.

Der Dritte Sohn opens with?the battle of the sexes front and center, as Drizzt is being born to Malice Do’Urden (Elga Sch?tz), ruler of House Do’Urden.? Drizzt will be?her third living son, and like any respectable Drow mother Malice intends to sacrifice?him to Lolth to ensure the spider-goddesses’?favor for a?genocidal sortie against a house of higher rank.? But Drizzt is spared when?the timely fratricide of his eldest brother by jealous sibling Dinin Do’Urden (Tim Grobe)?makes Drizzt?Malice’s second living son,?rendering the sacrificial ritual moot.? Nice people, those Drow.

Time passes and Drizzt survives the daily punishment of being male in House Do’Urden to develop a deep disgust for his fellow Drow.? Fortunately the ambidextrous Drizzt is exceedingly skilled with blades, so Malice places him under the tutelage of House weaponsmaster Zaknafein Do’Urden (Michael Prelle).? Zaknafein, Malice reveals with?calculated indifference, is Drizzt’s father.? It soon becomes apparent that the two share an unconventionally noble morality, and their relationship quietly blooms during sparring lessons.? Despite being powerless in his home, Zaknafein fights passionately where and when he can?to save the soul of his son from the?dark society?of the Drow.? The warmth of their father-son?lessons is interupted when that society brutally?intrudes, such as when Malice proudly?compels Drizzt to commit his first murder before her eyes.? The horror of such moments and Zaknafein’s helplessness to intervene?underscores the tenuous fragility of his bond with Drizzt.? It’s impossible to listen to this production and not feel for both of them, which is remarkable.? Not many fantasy novels can elicit that?kind of empathic response.

From this point on I was no longer a Drow . . . ?I was only Drizzt.

(The CD’s conclusion is spoiled in the paragraph below.? Skip it if you wish.)

Ultimately this first chapter is a plunge into darkness, as Drizzt?discovers?he owes his existence to the murder of his older brother.? Drizzt is compelled to renounce his world, his culture, and everyone he has known in order to be true to his own moral compass.? Even his beloved Zaknafein, he discovers, has taken part in?House Do’Urden’s?merciless?exterminations of rival Drow families.? Is his father just another?honorless?murderer like all the rest?? Feeling betrayed by the man he trusts most, Drizzt vents his despair in bloody?combat with?the monsters of the underworld.

Hey, they don’t call it dark fantasy for nothing.

As masterfully as the plot is laid out (and I’m not even getting into the significant sub-plot), a resolution like this would be damnably unsatisfying if the story ended there.? But this CD is only the?beginning of a saga that stretches over innumerable novels, and Lausch continues to release new adaptations of them at a rate of three a year (at the time of this writing 9 CD episodes have been released).??Der Dritte Sohn does stand on its own, however, as?a powerful and surprisingly moving?opening act.

I put this success?down to the drama’s consistent high quality.? Merlau takes a byzantine novel and makes it into?lucid drama,?introducing a complex culture and multiple plot-threads with?poetic economy.? As philosopher Martin Heidegger might have put it, Merlau’s script “worlds”, making the shadowy netherrealm of the Drow all too real.? Casting, that fine and rarely perfected art, is spot-on here.? This is particularly true for leading man Tobias Meister.? Many lesser actors would have just played Drizzt as an aloof bad-ass, and in doing so they would have killed?this story.? Tobias Meister’s Drizzt conceals his?emotions beneath a cooly dispassionate mask like an abused child, but?an innate sense of justice seeps through his every word and action.? It’s?a performance?made all the more?effective by Meister’s restraint.? Michael Prelle’s Zaknafein barely keeps?the desire to save his son hidden beneath?his gruff, business-like exterior.? From the moment she gives birth to Drizzt, the icy?strength Elga Sch?tz invests?in Malice leaves no doubt of her willingness to sacrifice anyone and everyone to?get what she wants.??I’m focusing on the story’s?three principle players here, but?the true strength of Der Dritte Sohn is that there isn’t a weak performance from the entire 15+ strong cast.? Even minor characters who only appear for a few minutes,?like?the sadistic Faceless?Master (Kurt Glockzin), leave a strong impression.?

A sweeping score?and minutely detailed sound effects complete the spell.? In fact, Die Dritte Sohn’s sound design reaches new heights of artistic excellence over?Lausch’s strong?fledgling efforts?Caine and Die Schwarze Sonne.? War drums throb in the background like the heartbeat of the underground empire, rising and falling with hypnotic intensity to support the action.? There are many outstanding aural moments, such as the scene where Zaknafein is covered with magical frost, the better to hide from the infravision of enemy Drow.? The creeping crackle of the ice over his body is so well realized you won’t just see it in your mind’s eye:? you’ll feel it bristling across?your own skin.? And once the frost spell is complete the acoustics?shift the listener from independent observer to Zaknafein’s perspective,?so that you hear his?associates through a distorting?layer of ice.??Roger Gregg’s amazing work notwithstanding, most?audio plays?situate the?listener in a?passively omniscient space somewhere outside the action.? Die Dritte Sohn’s magical frost scene subtly?locates you?within the story and?forces you to?viscerally identify with the reluctant weaponsmaster.?

Even following the popular success of Caine and Die Schwarze Sonne, mainstream h?rspiele websites like www.hoernews.de?were slow to recognize Lausch’s superior product.? After Drizzt no one is ignoring?Lausch anymore.? It’s nothing short of stunning that a company as young as this can produce?such?high?quality work, and it should serve as a lesson to all newcomers to the field.? If you want to make a splash, do daring, original work and do it as well or better than anyone else.? While it sounds impossible, Lausch’s?spellbinding chronicles of Drizzt prove that a scrappy little company with vision and talent?can compete with the biggest players?in the market.?

Next week:? Would you believe an old time radio style adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s beat fantasy, Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake?? (English)

Mwee Hee Hee Ha Ha Ha!

6 out of 10

Nihilism saves this pastiche from being completely barren.

?

Written by: Mike Richardson and Randy StradleyProduced by: Tom Voegeli

Highbridge Audio, 1999.

2 CDs

Availability:? In print.

For a universe that seemed so rich with possibility in the 1970?s, Star Wars has proven remarkably barren. Very few Star Wars audio dramas manage to be anything but pale echoes of the classic films. It?s a shame, since there are a number of characters and actors (the voice actors for Boba Fett and Darth Maul come to mind) who wouldn?t be cost prohibitive to use and could be fleshed out with inventive, original stories of their own.? In Germany things are finally happening: considerable energy and talent is now mustering behind new audio plays adapted from Star Wars universe novels.?

The latest effort, Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader directed by superstar hoerspiel producer Oliver Doering, is slated to have a cast of at least 50 professional actors, far beyond anything its US counterparts ever managed.? (The NPR cast of A New Hope clocked in at around 30 players.) This?4 CD release promises to address what happened to Vader between Episodes III and IV.? Personally I?m hoping for some Vader-hunting-down-Jedi action, even though I?m not sure I can handle the Sith Lord spouting Deutsch.? I only hope they can do the impossible, and find an effective German counterpart to the inimitable James Earle Jones. (If you?re curious about Dark Lord but don’t read German, an interview with Doering concerning another Star Wars adaptation, Labyrinth of Evil, has been translated into English at this website: http://www.starwarz.com/tbone/index.php?categoryid=16&p2_articleid=1133.? There are no plans to produce?either series in English.)

In the USA the vogue for producing Star Wars audio dramas, at least on a professional level, has lapsed. The NPR adaptations of the original trilogy are old news, and the last three films only inspired more audiobooks. The last burst of professional, US-made Star Wars audio drama happened in the late 90?s, when Highbridge Audio adapted several stories from “expanded universe” books and Dark Horse?s licensed comic book line. Most of these were lackluster. In addition to using music and sound effects from the films, most of them recycled the movies? locales, character types, situations, and plots.

Crimson Empire is no exception.? There is a cantina brawl lifted straight from Episode IV, a desert planet with landspeeders, a light-saber duel over a bottomless pit, a torture droid scene, a threat to punish a planet with Empire super-weapons if the female rebel hero doesn?t reveal the secret coordinates . . . is there an unwritten rule that all Star Wars protagonists have to run a gauntlet of identical scenes? Many of the characters are just as obvious analogues of film counterparts:?? Spirited rebel heroine, large gruff but friendly alien, outsider with mysterious abilities, etc. And inevitably, there are more painful Star Wars colloquialisms than you can shake a Yavinite Wampspider at. But Crimson Empire does have one thing to recommend it: a leading anti-hero whose skewed perspective makes revisiting the Star Wars universe interesting.

?

Patrick Coyle plays Kir Kanos, former Royal Guard to Emperor Palpatine. In the movies the Royal Guards were just cool-looking dudes with red visors and cloaks who marched around briefly, providing little else but templates for cool-looking action figures. Crimson Empire provides us with their backstory, informs us they have the combat skills (but not force powers) of Jedi, and chronicles the disintegration of their order. Neither good nor evil (except by allegiance), their defining trait is unquestioning loyalty to the Emperor. But what happens when the object of their devotion dies? Bereft after fellow guardsman Carnor Jax sabotages the slain Palpatine?s only chance for resurrection, Kanos finds new purpose in seeking revenge against the traitor.

Coyle?s understated, terse performance imbues Kanos with lethal tension. Kanos is chiefly interesting for his moral ambiguity: his icy reserve is shaded by personal honor easily mistaken for a nobler sense of justice. For most of the play Kanos serves as a screen upon which other characters project their desires, chief among them that he become the hero they need. Coyle?s non-committal yet sympathetic voice awakens this desire in the listener as well, but never gives the game away.

The rest of the cast performs with mixed success. Faring best are Gary Groomes (Colonel Shev and Emperor Palpatine), David Anthony Brinkley (General Wessel), and Wayne A. Evenson (Tem Merkon). Robert Downing Davis? Carnor Jax sounds more archly effete than menacing, and?a couple of his imperial officers sound like little league coaches?pressed into service as?soldiers.? Nichole Pelerine is fine as Leia analogue Mirith Sinn, but lacks the presence of Carrie Fisher.? Since no actor has ever been able to pull off credible impressions of any of the original Star Wars cast, Crimson Empire benefits from the absence of Luke, Leia, and Han. Almost all of the characters here are new: only Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and Biggs Darklighter get cameo moments. Gary Groomes convinces as Palpatine, but Crimson Empire proves again that no one can stand in for James Earle Jones. To his credit, Jim Cada?s attempt at Vader is better than most, but he still sounds like an actor trying to sound like Jones rather than the character himself.

Dialogue tends towards the portentous and melodramatic, not surprising?since most of it?is lifted verbatim from the Dark Horse comic book miniseries that inspired this audio adaptation. For much of the audio adventure you could actually read along with the comic, almost like those old story LPs from the 1970s.

Sound design consists of solid?if uninspired recycling of well-worn material from the films. After years of re-use in video games, audio dramas, and cartoons, Star Wars music and sound effects inevitably sound canned and sterile.

Ironically, it is the emptiness of Crimson Empire?s anti-hero that saves it from being as barren as other Star Wars pastiches. This is no Joseph Campbell “hero?s journey”: Without a connection to the Force to tempt him towards Dark or Light, Kanos treads a grey path unconcerned with personal redemption or damnation.? If Vader is Faust, Kanos is Ogami Itto walking the road of meifumad?. The Royal Guard?s relentless drive for vengeance gives the drama a nihilistic spark that sets it apart.

If the Star Wars story must be replayed, let it be through a fractured glass.

Next week:? Young company Lausch (Listen) slashes its way into the German audio drama scene with an adaptation of R. A. Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms novel, Drizzt – Die Saga von Dunkelelf 1:? Der Dritte Sohn.? (Drizzt, Saga of the Dark Elf 1:? The Third Son.)

7 out of 10

Brimming with Gothic atmosphere, Larry Brent’s first audiobook adventure is a nostalgic reminder that as good as dramatic adaptations can be, an author?s original text has a charm all its own.

Dan Shocker?s Larry Brent #1: Das Grauen schleicht durch Bonnards Haus
(Dan Shocker?s Larry Brent #1: Horror creeps through Bonnard?s House)

Written by Dan Shocker (J?rgen Grasm?ck)
(23. Januar 1940 in Hanau; ? 7. August 2007)

Read by Rainer Schmitt.
Produced by Lausch for Europa

3 CDs

Language: German

There?s something about a hero named ?Larry? that kills me. The name is so salt-of-the-earth that one of the minor characters in the movie?Pee-Wee?s Big Adventure, ?Amazing Larry?, was funny mostly because his name sounded like an oxymoron. Don?t get me wrong ? I love the Larrys in my life, including one of the sweetest and most honorable elderly men I?ve known and a college buddy with the most infectious laugh I?ve ever heard. But Larrys are sadly neglected when it comes to hero names. Well, Larrys of the world, take heart: in Germany your name is the stuff of legend.

That is, the legend of PSA secret agent Larry Brent, investigator of the paranormal. What, another German occult detective? Not another one, my friends: the first one. Dan Shocker?s (J?rgen Grasm?ck) square-jawed, laser-gun toting adventurer debuted in 1968 in Das Grauen schleicht durch Bonnards Haus, spawning a long-running series and inspiring a new horror-themed genre of German pulp publishing. This audiobook production of Das Grauen carries some historical interest then, since Larry Brent?s first adventure kicked off the occult detective trend that still defines a large segment of the German audio drama market.

What?s most unusual about the character Larry Brent in this day and age is his nationality: American (United States). German pulp writers, as a general rule, steadfastly avoid creating German heroes, generally preferring English-speaking protagonists (John Sinclair, Gabriel Burns) and exotic locales like Britain or Canada. Americans aren?t all that popular in Germany now, and it?s rare to see an American hero in a new German serial. Back in the 60?s and 70?s, though, West Germany was generally very positive about Americans (One German fellow pursued my mom for over a year with no success, poor guy) and American heroes were more prevalent in German pulps.

Larry is introduced to us as an FBI agent on vacation in France, but he never gets to enjoy the quiet charms of the Maurs district. Rumors are flying about giant bats attacking the local populace, strangely singling out those possessing blood type A. Shortly after arriving Brent discovers the corpse of one of their victims, a man whose self-destructing ring identifies him as the agent of a secret organization. His curiosity piqued, Brent investigates the horrific experiments of Dr. Canol and ultimately pursues the case to the forbidding manse of Egyptologist Dr. Bonnard. Are vampires plying their unholy trade in France, or is something even more bizarre at work?

Originally published in 1968, Das Grauen has its share of dated spy novel trappings. When else but the sixties could you get away with codenames like X-RAY-18? Nostalgia is definitely a selling point of this new audiobook series, which was made with long-time fans in mind. Europa produced 15 much-loved, bloody but very campy Larry Brent audio dramas back in the 1980s and has re-released them on CD as part of its ?R?ckkehr der Klassiker? (?Return of the Classic Writers?) line. Rainer Schmitt, the reader of this audio book, played hero Larry Brent in those productions.

Although Europa?s 1980?s audio dramas anticipated and inspired much of the contemporary work coming out of Germany, Europa itself hasn?t aged well as a producer of adult audio drama. (They still publish the popular children’s?series Die Drei ??? / The Three Investigators.)? Europa attempted to get into the newly rejuvenated adult audio drama market with two new Macabros recordings, but these were poorly produced by modern standards and weren?t well received. Wisely they?ve opted for the cheaper, less creatively demanding option of releasing Larry Brent as a series of audio books, and contracted production out to Lausch, one of Germany?s hottest young audio drama companies.

So how does it sound?

Rainer Schmitt ? considered THE voice of Larry Brent by German fans due to his audio drama portrayals of the hero back in the 80s – turns out to be a superlative reader. He breathes vibrant life into Shocker?s stock characters, giving the stolid French police chief grumbling presence and the morally conflicted Dr. Canol a delightfully anemic rasp. Schmitt has that rare ability to make you forget you?re listening to one man rather than a cast, and his versatility and verve makes this production compelling from start to finish. For this reviewer, Schmitt has become a name to watch out for.

Some German commentators have complained about Schmitt?s pacing, which is relentlessly fast. A more relaxed tempo wouldn?t hurt; it sometimes seems as though Schmitt is racing through Shocker?s text to squeeze it onto 3 CDs. But while Schmitt?s?rapidfire delivery?would have ruined Wuthering Heights, it?gives this pulp?adventure story a fitting rush of adrenaline.

The choice of music is interesting: Lausch opted to create a soundscape that evokes the 60?s / 70?s trappings of the original Brent novels. The music sounds like a basement Jazz combo, with a drum, piano, and some strumming violins added for Gothic tension. It?s a different approach than WortArt took with its modern, cinematic production of Jason Dark?s John Sinclair audiobook, Die R?ckkehr des Schwarzen Tod (Return of the Black Death). The music, like the story, is never really scary, but its exaggerated menace fits the material. Synthesized high-pitched bleats work particularly well in evoking the cries of giant bats and the pain of their piercing bites. The introductory / closing theme with its over-the-top maniacal laughter is, well . . . very, very German. I?ll leave it at that.

It is disappointing that Lausch has opted to use the same music tracks for both of their initial Larry Brent audio book releases instead of giving each its own soundtrack and individual feel. But I suppose this is a cost-cutting measure, and 14,95 Euros for 3 CDs is a tough price to beat.

There are few sound effects in the production outside of a well-placed thunderclap.

As supernatural detective stories go, I found this one surprisingly inventive. The plot doesn?t proceed in the direction you?d expect, and the characters, while 2-dimensional, all entertain. This is an origin story, and thus there are two interweaving plots ? the evil goings-on and the story of Brent?s first encounter with and adoption into the PSA, a paranormal investigative branch of the FBI. Shocker lays out some of the serial?s principle players such as the shadowy, blind director of the PSA and his gangly assistant, Bony. Brent himself is a likeable enough square-jawed type, although his introduction suffers from the principle ill plaguing German pulp-horror: a Deus-ex-Machina resolution. This is, in fact, the most literal Deus-ex-Machina ending I?ve ever heard. In a series named for its hero, you might expect Brent to resolve the situation through the application of his singular skills and intelligence. Not this time.

But if you want clever resolutions you should probably stick to straight mysteries. Occult detective stories, like horror tales, thrive more on generating a haunting atmosphere than ratiocinative logic. In this Larry Brent succeeds, after a fashion. You?re unlikely to be frightened, but as with a classic black-and-white horror film, you?ll likely fall under the spell of its outdated Gothic charm anyway. I don?t know if Bela Lugosi?s Dracula really scares people anymore, but he?s still a captivating presence onscreen.

All in all, ?Larry Brent? is a nice addition to an audio drama field crowded with occult detectives. Das Grauen schleicht durch Bonnards Haus is a welcome reminder that as good as audio drama adaptations can be, an author?s original, unedited text has a charm all its own.

Next Week: Malleus takes an exacting look at Highbridge audio?s Star Wars universe spin-off, Crimson Empire (English). Is the force with this audio drama?s charismatic anti-hero, or does his story choke on the stale ideas of an outworn franchise?

8 out of 10

A post-apocalyptic audio book / drama packed with steel-jacketed entertainment for your inner libertarian.

Deathlands #73: Labyrinth

2006 The Cutting Corporation
Directed by Richard Rohan
Starring: Richard Rohan, Terence Aselford, Colleen Delany, Delores King Williams, Nanette Savard, Casey Jones, Ken Jackson, Karen Carbone and David Coin.

Availability: In print. (Audio CD, MP3 CD, WMA download)
Approximate running time: 8 hours

Language: English.

Try before you buy: sample available at http://www.graphicaudio.net/p-82-73-labyrinth.aspx

Rated Mature by the publisher for graphic violence.
Although Deathlands titles often contain graphic sex scenes, Labyrinth does not.

The post-apocalyptic genre draws its power from making the familiar strange. Half the interest comes from seeing how social mores and lifeways would be transformed by a (typically nuclear) holocaust. There?s a Teddy Roosevelt / Robert E. Howard sense of stripping away civilization to reveal a rougher but more authentic, usually hyper-masculine, core. What emerges from the ashes may be broken, but it has primal honesty lost to our world of comfort and appearances. It?s a fantasy with a dubious pedigree, with roots in Cold War anti-Communist paranoia and the potential racism and sexism attending any Wild West vision. In knowing hands, though, these unfortunate legacies can be navigated and compelling tales can be told.

Compared to straight sci-fi and fantasy, there haven?t been many post-apocalypse audio dramas. A few stand out, including John Reed?s 1981 adaptation of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Darker Projects? more recent (and sadly seldom updated) amateur serial Alive Inside (http://www.darkerprojects.com/aliveinside.html), and CBC?s unreleased Adventures of Apocalypse Al by J. Michael Straczynski (http://www.sffaudio.com/2007/07/commentary-radio-drama-from-j-michael.html.) But with almost seventy 6 to 8 hour episodes in release and more on the way, it?s hard to top Graphic Audio?s Deathlands for sheer scope and ambition.

Deathlands is a post-apocalyptic serial penned by ?James Axler?, the collective pseudonym of several authors. Rather than adapt Axler?s novels into tighter dramatic scripts, Graphic Audio performs the unabridged novels verbatim as plays. The results sound like audio drama but move at the slower pace of an audio book. Adjusting to this novelistic tempo takes time, but is well worth the effort: these are the most effective fusions of audio drama and book I?ve heard. The Deathlands releases have casts, a cinematic musical score, and elaborate sound effects. (Often, when gruesome wounds are inflicted, ludicrously elaborate. Who else would use sound effects to depict a bullet?s violent passage through human flesh and bone ? as heard from the bullet?s perspective?) Although Graphic Audio titles feature heavy narration, unlike other audio drama/book attempts (Listening Library?s stilted ?Words take Wing? titles, Yuri Rasovsky?s Jurgen) they wisely do not follow actors? dialogue with the narrator intoning ?said Ryan?, ?hissed Playvik?, ?Mildred said stubbornly?, etc. A good example I wish more audio book / drama directors would follow.

The Deathlands series concerns a band of survivalists wandering post-nuclear America. Deathlands is pulp, and as per pulp convention characters are kept familiar and simple. Leading man Ryan Cawdor is a tough as nails warrior sporting an eye-patch and a wicked blade. Think Mad Max, Roland Deschaine, or Snake Plissken. His companions largely consist of stock types, such as the antiquated, wise old scholar and the beautiful love interest who taps into the power of the Earth Mother. Graphic Audio?s repertory cast play their Deathlands roles so well, though, that the characters rarely sound as two-dimensional as they are. Richard Rohan?s versatile voice becomes absolutely chameleonic when he adopts Ryan?s direct, hard-bitten persona. Terence Aselford injects just the right measure of grizzled humor into gunsmith J.B. Dix, and Colleen Delany leavens grit with poise as Ryan?s lover, the mystic Krysty Wroth.

Labyrinth is a hybrid of the story type Stephen King calls ?the strange town? and Aliens-style survival horror. The tale begins when Ryan and his band discover the idyllic town of Little Pueblo in the canyons of New Mexico. Desperate for food and water, they interrupt a local gathering inside an abandoned theater. The townsfolk consist of wealthy alpha male ?Pilgrims?, poor beta male laborers, and female slaves who are bought and sold like cattle. Under the guiding hand of spiritual leader Playvik, they follow the polygamous cult of ?Bob and Enid?. The cult is a blunt satire of patriarchal, fundamentalist religion, an insane fa?ade erected to mask the darker reality lurking within a nearby dam. Sadly, while Labyrinth was recorded in 2006, current events in Texas make this aspect of the story seem very topical. There is even a substantial sub-plot that involves rescuing an under-aged pregnant teen and liberating her from this oppressive male-dominated system.

Overwhelmed by the cult?s superior numbers, Cawdor?s group is soon divided: Most escape to an ancient laboratory complex, but Ryan and J.B. are caught and offered as sacrifices to the ?demons? of the dam. Inside the lab Dr. Mildred Wyeth (Delores King Williams) examines evidence to unravel the mystery of the dam, providing exposition on the town and its background. I enjoyed Mildred?s investigation, but I wish the writer hadn?t leaned so heavily on her convenient knowledge of everything under the sun. After awhile she starts to seem less like an informed character and more like an all-too convenient expository device for an author in a hurry. Still, a smart, three-dimensional black female character in men?s pulp fantasy ? how often do you get that? Mildred is a strong character but never becomes the stereotypical ?strong black woman?, and her speech is mercifully free of the heavy-handed blaxploitation slang white writers often use. She doesn?t say ?you go girl? when talking to a female ally, or hoot ?that?s what I?m talking about!? after she aces a foe.

Meanwhile, inside the dam Ryan and J.B.?s struggle to survive the demons? predation provides horror-movie tension and gruesome thrills.

Congratulations ? it?s an it.

Any Aliens-style adventure ultimately stands or falls on its monsters. Labyrinth?s demons are gruesome enough, but not particularly novel save in one respect: speed. Endowed with the reaction time and agility of fleas, the man-sized demons? ability to maneuver faster than thought makes them an intimidating tactical challenge. Deathlands routinely offers up an NRA-lover?s dream of gun fetishism, but the demons? incredible velocity makes conventional weaponry all but useless here. Good sound design gives these non-verbal creatures frightening presence. Chittering, burrowing, or flying past in a blur of motion, they sound uncanny and ruthlessly efficient. My only criticism would be consistency: sometimes sound effects underscore narration of the demons? actions, sometimes not. It?s an odd shift between cinematic and straight audio book styles that could have been better handled.

Labyrinth succeeds in reinvigorating a long running series with genuinely fresh antagonists. Hopelessly outclassed, Ryan?s band is forced to rely on their wits and sheer luck. Aside from Dr. Wyeth?s clunky exposition, if Labyrinth has one fault it?s that it is too long to sustain its break-neck pace. On the other hand, that length turns what could have been a moment?s escapism into an immersive epic. And after experiencing the brutal truth of the Deathlands you may not want to hurry back to your boring, civilized life.

Next week: A return to German gothic with a review of a new audio book production of the Grusel-krimi that started it all, Larry Brent #1: Das Grauen Schleicht durch Bonnard’s Haus. (Larry Brent #1: Horror Creeps through Bonnard’s House.)

8?out of 10

A welcome interlude in the Middle Ages vampire serial for longtime fans and an accessible, self-contained starting point for newcomers.?

Blutkrieg ? Die Edition
Blood War ? the (collected) Edition

(This series was previously released on 5 individual CDs.? Although the stories are all self-contained, they are interconnected and build on one another.? I recommend this collected edition, which is considerably cheaper than buying the 5 singly.)

An audiobook by Wolfgang Hohlbein.? Read by the author.?
5 CDs, 377 minutes
ZYX music, 2007.

Blutkrieg is situated between books 8 and 9 of the dark fantasy series Die Chronik der Unsterblichen (Chronicle of the Undying.)?

Language:? German.

Try before you buy:

The first chapter of Blutkrieg, Die Schwarze Gischt, was premiered in segments on the German ?Neurotainment? podcast and is still available.? Use the links below to download this free and fully authorized broadcast.

http://www.audioads.de/files/254/np00004.mp3
http://www.audioads.de/files/255/np00005.mp3
http://www.audioads.de/files/256/np00006.mp3
http://www.audioads.de/files/257/np00007.mp3
http://www.audioads.de/files/258/np00008.mp3

Perhaps we are dead.? And this is Hell.

? Abu Dun

Germany?s horror novelist Jason Dark / Helmut Rellergerd is sometimes compared to American author Stephen King, but for emotional resonance, stylistic range, and page-turning eloquence I find Wolfgang Hohlbein a better analogue to the American master.? Hohlbein is an interesting hybrid:? he has roots in pulpy German grusel-serials (Der Hexer, Raven) but seems equally comfortable penning more sophisticated fantasy / horror novels (Unheil, Der Inquisitor, Dunkel.)? Of the many German authors who have tried to bridge these genres, Hohlbein has been the most successful, particularly with his middle-ages vampire serial Die Chronik der Unsterblichen.? Chronik began in 1999 with solid fantasy novels featuring elaborate plots and sizable casts.? With Blutkrieg, Hohlbein pauses his epic narrative for an interlude of elemental pulp fare.?

Die Chronik der Unsterblichen series currently rests on the shoulders of two protagonists:? haunted swordsman Andrej Del?ny and his comrade-in-arms, stolid ex-pirate Abu Dun.? Both are vampires, which in Hohlbein?s world means they regenerate quickly, have above-average strength, age slowly, and are subject to a demonic thirst for blood, something Andrej and Abu Dun choose to resist.

Abu Dun?s grim assessment,? ?Perhaps we are dead.? And this is Hell?, sums up Blutkrieg?s bleak Waiting for Godot / Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead atmosphere.? After being tricked into slaying a ship?s innocent crew, a repentant Abu Dun and Andrej set out to do the only decent thing left:? return the corpses to their Northern homeland for burial.? But the vampires soon find themselves alone and out of their depth in a frozen landscape that threatens their very survival and renders their physical and moral progress pyrrhic.? As their Scandinavian Odyssey becomes a personal hell the companions are forced to fight or make devil?s bargains with a host of malign powers, including werewolves, zombies, witches and dreamspiders.? The frigid wastes themselves are arguably the vampires? worst foe, perpetually threatening to swamp their lives and souls in a vast grey limbo.

The companions? saving grace turns out to be their devotion to each other, which not only gets them to watch each other?s backs but gives them heart and purpose.? In this sense Blutkrieg is a true ?buddy? narrative not unlike the bi-racial ?buddy cop? Hollywood films of the 1980?s.? Movies like Lethal Weapon steadfastly avoided contemporary racial schisms with a ?pass the popcorn? ethos of straight action and camaraderie.? Chronik adapts this approach to religious difference, with European Christian Andrej and Nubian Muslim Abu Dun regularly engaging in the teasing banter of their cop movie counterparts.? They maintain what anthropologists call a ?joking relationship?, defusing potentially schismatic differences through friendly one-upmanship.? It?s not hard to read a contemporary German wish to rise above the country?s sometimes nervous relationship with its large Turkish minority into Andrej and Abu Dun?s playful, empathic bickering.? Regardless, Hohlbein invests his characters with enough human depth that the selfless commitment beneath their mocking repartee remains credible and moving throughout.? Blutkrieg is ultimately a dark paean to fraternal love.

As in the first Chronik audiobook, the author himself narrates this release.? Although Hohlbein lacks an actor?s baritone timbre, his voice has the sincerity and urgency of a young priest?s.? He doesn?t so much perform these morality plays as testify them, drawing listeners in with his mesmerizing, quasi-confessional undertone.?

Hohlbein?s narration is supported by the series? infectiously melodramatic theme song and quieter musical passages featuring an erhu.? While this traditional Chinese instrument might seem out-of-place in Chronik?s European setting it somehow works, giving the story an otherworldly, melancholic air.? The recording?s sparse sound effects are less impressive:? canned metallic clangs and horse whinnies occasionally disrupt Blutkrieg?s potent spell.

For this long-time fan, hearing Hohlbein spin new tales of Andrej and Abu Dun feels like returning to a desolate but beautiful homeland.? Hohlbein puts out a new chapter of Chronik der Unsterblichen every year, but so far only the first two books and Blutkrieg have been produced as audiobooks.?

Here?s hoping for many more.

Next week:??Cleanse the pallet of angst and moral ambiguity with?the high impact Malleus?review of Graphic Audio’s post-apocalyptic adventure, Deathlands #73:? Labyrinth.? (English language.)

Below – The vampire Andrej returns home in the comic book adaptation of the first novel in the Chronik der Unsterblichen series.

5 out of 10 stars

Ham-fisted sermons on non-attachment don’t translate into riveting audio drama.

Midnight at the Casa Luna: Part Two
A Jack Flanders adventure

By Meatball Fulton (Thomas Manuel Lopez)
1 CD, 63 minutes
2000
ZBS originally sold this story as two individual CDs, Part One and Part Two: now they package them together. This review concerns Part 2 only. You can still buy them separately from Amazon.

Last week I reviewed Midnight at the Casa Luna: Part One, a solid and entertaining Jack Flanders outing. Does Part Two hold up? Read on . . .

In the wake of Part One, Jack Flanders (Robert Lorrick) finds himself in possession of the mystic green ball he stole for his uncle, Sir Henry Jowls. But Jowls is nowhere to be found. Jack prowls the New York streets hoping to stumble across the trans-dimensional Casa Luna café, which never appears in the same place twice. From there, perhaps he can track down the elusive Sir Jowls and finally unload his magical burden . . .

This episode starts promisingly. Jack’s latest night walk takes on a surreal and lightly comedic air as strange weather and a shadowy accordian-man try to stop him from entering the Casa Luna. Eventually Jack succeeds and is reunited with the café’s proprietor, Nani (Phoebe Moon). Phoebe Moon’s English is perfect, and Tom Lopez has a checkered history writing Asian characters that approach stereotype. In Part One Lopez and Moon wrote and delivered Nani’s accented dialogue with credible understatement. This time around Moon’s fractured English becomes more exaggerated and is, how you say in your language, ‘not as convincing.’ The listener can also be forgiven for wondering why Nani suddenly develops a Russian accent and starts threatening Jack with ultimatums. Of course it’s just Moon playing a second role, but since both characters sound like the same woman sporting different accents, some confusion is understandable. Is this the Indonesian Nani’s evil Russian twin? With a cast this small (five, including the narrator) it’s hard to understand why ZBS couldn’t just hire another actor. Or perhaps just cut the Russian villain out altogether, as she never reappears, is never explained, and has no real impact on the story.

After chatting with Nani, Jack is once again offered a ride by an enchanted motorbike. Tim Clark’s music is as richly evocative as ever, making you hear the dawn break on Jack and the motorbike as they putter along. For all its flaws, there’s no question this release has its share of poetic moments rendered in classic ZBS style.

Things start to falter, though, when Jack reunites with Sir Henry Jowls and the mischievous infrit, Leela. Both roles from Part One were recast for Part Two, and unfortunately it makes for a jarring shift. Lopez tries to finesse the cast changes by telling us these versions of the characters are from other dimensions, hence their different voices and personality traits. This explanation doesn’t serve the plot, though, and seems more like a flip excuse for real-world casting problems. Art Fairbain’s Jowls is more chipper and less calculating than Bill Hufnagle’s, but essentially the character remains the same 19th century British adventurer that Murray Head originated in The Fourth Tower of Inverness. It’s Ana Veronica Munoz’s Leela that I really missed. Gloria Leyva’s Leela is more petulant and less natural, so that the infrit’s sultry vivaciousness now sounds forced. Worse, the chemistry that bubbled so easily between Lorrick and Munoz has vanished.

Eventually Jack, Jowls, and Leela plot a course to the fabled city of the Merkahbah, which Jack has visited in dreams. Having done it many times before, Lopez and Clark are now old hands at conjuring celestial cities in sound. Not surprisingly then, Jack’s visits to the Merkahbah are serenely realized with a few artfully placed sound effects and Clark’s ethereal music.

The Tibetan hungry ghosts Jack encounters en route to the city also feature great sound design, emitting ululating squeals and miserable bleats that set the mind on edge. Unfortunately, the ghosts quickly transition from being active antagonists to passive cautionary tales, as Jack and company retreat to a safe distance to observe and offer Dante-esque commentary on the specters’ hellish condition. Lopez writes best when he weaves his New Age revelations into the dramatic action, but he’s least effective when he resorts to preaching. He does the latter here, using Jack’s observations of the hungry ghosts to draw labored and obvious spiritual insights. Many of these lessons have been imparted with greater subtlety and artistry in previous ZBS productions, such as Inanna’s unforgettable encounter with the Clay People in Ruby 3. The key difference between that scene and it’s equivalent in Casa Luna Part 2 being that Inanna learns her lesson by interacting dramatically with the unfortunate Clay People, while Flanders stands back and just describes what he sees the Hungry Ghosts doing.

Although Midnight in the Casa Luna: Part 2 is a moralistic work, by journey’s end so much is left unresolved that it’s hard to say what the moral is. Why did the sinister forces opposing Jack’s quest (the accordian men, Russian-accent lady) just vanish halfway through the journey? Was there any narrative point to having other versions of Leela and Lord Jowls, or was ZBS simply unable to rehire the original actors? Did Jack succeed or fail in his quest? Does it even matter? Somewhere along the way Part Two’s plot gets lost amongst Orientalist set pieces and New Age lectures. Despite this sequel’s solid production values it fails to recapture the verve of Part One, and ends up feeling disjointed and anemic.

There’s a teaser ending that will bring a smile to old Jack Flanders fans. Rosie and the Originals’ ‘Angel Baby’ still carries such eerie, nostalgic pull that you can almost forget the shortcomings of Midnight at the Casa Luna: Part Two.

Almost.

Next week: A return to German-language material as Malleus explores the shadowy world of Wolfgang Hohlbein’s Middle Ages vampire serial in my review of the audiobook Chronik der Unsterblichen: Blutkrieg (Chronicle of the Undying: Blood War.)

This week Malleus reviewed part one of ZBS’ Jack Flanders adventure, Midnight at the Casa Luna. The Casa Luna is a real (and very good) cafe in Ubud, Bali, a locale it has been my pleasure to visit twice. In honor of ZBS, Bali, the Mekar Sari gamelan orchestra, and my wife, I’m posting a live recording of gamelan music I made on honeymoon in Ubud in 2001. Click below to experience it, then read on to hear the story behind the recording.

Download audio file (meka-sari-gamelan-orchestra-bali.mp3)

In the summer of 2001 I was in Ubud, Bali on honeymoon with my wife Pamela. I’d been there once before and had seen a gamelan performance featuring extraordinarily talented children dancing (most shows feature adults). Since my wife is a pediatrician and loves both kids and dance, I was hoping we’d be able to catch a similar show.

Unfortunately, none were scheduled during the week we were there. A little desperate, I asked around to see if it might be possible to hire a dancer and a musician or two for a private performance. No, I was told, you’d have to hire the entire troupe. I worked as a temp at the time and didn’t have much, but on the other hand this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the American dollar was strong then. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask what it would cost.

Turned out the fee was surprisingly reasonable – so much so that I decided haggling, usually a commonplace in Southeast Asia, would be gauche. Pretty soon I’d hired an entire gamelan orchestra and dance troupe for a surprise private performance for my wife. Now given that this happened way back in 2001, and given that I don’t want to cause any trouble for Mekar Sari down the road, I’m not going to quote prices here. I will say, however, that if you go to Ubud it would really be worth your while to inquire.

The experience itself was pure magic. We were lead to a bench in front of an open courtyard, with the full gamelan orchestra seated to one side. They started playing and my wife, still with no idea of what was going on, was dumbstruck when a parade of costumed little girls appeared and threw flowers in our laps. The entire experience was absolutely beguiling. If you’ve never heard gamelan, there’s no way to adequately describe its beautiful, unearthly sound.

So I’m not going to try. The mp3 above is my recording of the first piece we heard on one of the best nights of our lives. Enjoy, and the next time you visit Ubud, look up Mekar Sari!

I?d like to thank Tom Lopez and Aaron Ximm (www.quietamerican.org) for inspiring me to make this recording by their examples.

7 out of 10 stars

If you know Jack and need a respite from faster entertainments, the soothing aroma of spiced coffee beckons you to the Casa Luna.

Midnight at the Casa Luna: Part One
A Jack Flanders adventure
By Meatball Fulton (Thomas Manuel Lopez)
ZBS Foundation
1 CD, 65 minutes (ZBS originally sold this tale on two individual CDs, Part One and Part Two: now they package them together. This review concerns Part One only. Next week I’ll tackle Part Two.)
1998

My favorite ZBS (Zero Bull Shit) production will always be 1972′s The Fourth Tower of Inverness, but it can’t be denied the company hit a creative peak in the late 1980′s. Tom Lopez (producer/writer/director Meatball Fulton) had solidified his creative partnership with ‘Space music’ composer Tim Clark, and styling themselves as a pair of old-time explorers (“Fulton and Clark”), the two went on groundbreaking sound safaris in locales like the Amazon. Casts were burgeoning with fresh talent playing delightful new characters, and Lopez’ mind was percolating with witty, relevant social commentary. In all of these areas, Dreams of Rio (1987) was a high water mark.

ZBS fell on hard times after the non-profit’s National Endowment for the Arts funding was axed by a Republican congress. Soundscape expeditions became more seldom and less elaborate, casting took fewer risks with a more repertory-style approach, NPR stopped broadcasting ZBS productions, and Lopez began to repeat himself creatively. But ZBS had built a fiercely loyal base of listeners over the years, and while the transition to private funding wasn’t easy, fan support cushioned the blow.

Although ZBS still occasionally records productions like 2000′s Return to Inverness, their days of releasing long-playing sagas seem to be pretty much over. I’ve come to think of their more recent work, typically 1-3 CD releases with more intimate casts (and budgets), as ‘chamber music’ compared to the older ‘symphonic’ releases. There’s certainly nothing wrong with ‘chamber music’-style audio drama. AM/FM Theater’s 2006 ‘God of the Razor’ adaptation, featuring a superlative cast of two, was the best audio drama gem I’ve heard in years. That said, ZBS’ shorter releases have been a mixed success, and the two-part Midnight at the Casa Luna is no exception.

Midnight at the Casa Luna is the second ZBS adventure starring spiritual adventurer Jack Flanders to be set in Bali. Once a reluctant hero, Jack has now accepted his role as a good-hearted investigator of mystic dilemmas. Sometimes people contact Jack for help when things get bizarre, sometimes he simply stumbles into problems himself. He typically solves problems with good humour, a questing intellect, and a gentle heart. Jack never draws a sword or a gun, although he’s been known to give wise-ass demons a good beating when they ask for it. But when talking fails and violence threatens, he usually runs away. Jack Flanders has always been more about exploring other levels of reality (and of self) than conquering them.

The story begins as Jack is whisked away from the anonymous streets of New York to subtler realms via a trans-dimensional coffee shop, the Casa Luna of the title. The Casa Luna café really does exist in Ubud, Bali, and it really does have excellent coffee, pastries, and an enchantingly calm atmosphere. As Jack says, it’s a favorite haunt of the local expatriate crowd. Those darn tourists like it too, and if you go as one, you’ll be happy to be there.

After crossing over into a mystic landscape Jack encounters more friends than foes, but every ally seems to have an agenda and a price for their aid, and none are very forthcoming about what those might be. Forced to rely on opaque benefactors, Jack ultimately finds himself maneuvered into stealing a precious artifact for reasons unknown.

I’d recommend Midnight at the Casa Luna most to veteran Flanders fans. Newcomers would be better served starting at the beginning with the rough diamond Fourth Tower or more polished later work like Dreams of Rio. I say this because only long time listeners will appreciate how Jack has aged. Voices don’t age as rapidly as faces, a fact that allows companies like Big Finish to hire actors to reprise roles for audio drama that they originated on T.V. in younger days. Since Jack Flanders first hit the airwaves in 1972 writer / director Thomas Lopez has gotten older, Robert Lorrick (who plays Jack) has gotten older, and so have their devoted fans. Having Jack the character age too, however, is not a necessity but a creative decision.

It’s not one without risk. There’s a reason most heroes are young: their adventures are usually rites of passage into adulthood driven by the energy and naivete of youth. Older folks tend to be more comfortable with who they are and where they’re going. There are classic exceptions of course (Odysseus springs to mind). But the Jack of Midnight, though he retains his bumbling charm, is not the young Jack of Inverness. He approaches problems with a more bemused and relaxed air. One has the feeling that everything can be resolved over a good cup of coffee – no “feets, do your stuff” running from fire-breathing demons here. Midnight at the Casa Luna’s laid-back pace isn’t going to rip anyone out of his or her seat, but you may find your mind unwinding in its lingering, quiet warmth.

For those who have been to Bali, and particularly to the cultural center of Ubud, (and if you haven’t been, by all means, go!) Midnight will evoke many fond associations. Lopez uses the same haunting gamelan tune that is routinely piped over the trading stalls of Ubud, and in the character of Casa Luna proprietor Nani he nails the cheerful yet understated character of Balinese hospitality. I don’t know what Phoebe Moon’s background is (Korean’), but she does a fine job injecting Balinese authenticity into her quiet purr and indulgent chuckle. Between Nani, the good coffee, and the gamelan music, you really feel like you’ve slipped out of your time and space into the Casa Luna.

While this adventure never references the Indian / Indonesian epic the Ramayana, thematically it recalls one of its key tropes: The heroic servant. In the Ramayana, the warrior-monkey Hanuman employs his magic and wits to help his master Rama recapture his lady-love Sita from the demon king, Ravana. Hanuman is a selfless agent on behalf of Rama, and while Rama engages in key battles, Hanuman performs several heroic deeds on his behalf. By the end of the story, Hanuman in his humble servitude is arguably the greater hero.

Bali has long had a service economy keyed towards cultural tourism, and while tourism is regularly associated with cultural decline, the Balinese have accommodated it with rare grace. In Ubud you can pay to see cultural performances, but you will also see regular religious rituals in the streets and temples that the Balinese would perform with or without you there. The extremely high quality of the performing arts in Ubud, with its balletic dance troupes and refined gamelan orchestras, also makes a good argument for the positive side of tourism. It’s fashionable to deride tourists, as Jack himself does in this adventure, but whether he likes it or not Jack himself is a consummate cultural tourist (and Midnight at the Casa Luna is most definitely an aural form of cultural tourism.) Seeking out an ‘authentic’ pre-tourism Bali is in any event a doomed endeavor: it vanished a long, long time ago. Luckily for us, post-tourism Bali has many wonders to offer.

In Midnight the ethos of noble hospitality comes through the characters of Nani and Leela, the vivacious Infrit who plays Hanuman to Jack’s Rama. Intoxicating, sensual, and playfully cryptic, Leela enables our hero’s journey with her magical gifts. Leela, like the ‘villain’ of the piece, the ‘Dragon Lady’, is Hispanic, an ethnicity that fits well with Lopez’s casting connections but seems out of place for these Asian / Middle Eastern archetypes. Lopez quickly disarms ethnic expectations with his customary humor, and actresses Ana Veronica Munoz (Leela) and Virginia Rambal (Madame Zee, the ‘Dragon Lady’) are captivating and fully convincing in their respective roles. By journey’s end you wouldn’t want anyone else.

For a ZBS production of this vintage, there are surprisingly few familiar faces in the cast, which perhaps accounts for its freshness. All the new players were well-chosen, and returning narrator Kirby Airs lends the proceedings just the right touch of classic familiarity for long-time fans. Only Bill Hufnagle’s Sir Henry Jowls seems oddly younger and less British than he has in past incarnations, but the dream-like atmosphere of the piece leads you to wonder if perhaps this was the intention. Like all Jack Flanders adventures, this one tests our faith in reality with a subtle Buddhist critique of self-fabricated illusion. The Dalang (puppet master) of this shadow play is never revealed, and none of the characters can be entirely trusted, even to be themselves. (Something part 2 takes even further.)

The sound design is vivid and evocative, whether it’s the impatient sputter of an animated Southeast Asian motorbike or the seductive peal of wind chimes lulling you into enchanted slumber. Composer Tim Clark is in fine form, injecting orientalist mysticism into the play’s musical ambiance.

With vivid characters, spot-on dialogue, exotic locales, and classic magical gambits Midnight at the Casa Luna is everything I hoped it would be, recapturing the magic of Jack’s youthful heyday as experienced through the filter of age. Listeners are transported into a relaxed adventure with an old friend, tinted with more convincing local color and a stronger plot than it’s predecessor, Dreams of Bali. If you know Jack and need a respite from faster entertainments, the soothing aroma of spiced coffee beckons you to the Casa Luna.

ZBS sells this adventure together with Midnight at the Casa Luna: Part Two at www.ZBS.org. You can still buy the two adventures separately (as ZBS originally marketed them) from Amazon.

Bonus: In the spirit of Bali fondly remembered, I’m making a separate Malleus post this week featuring a recording I made while on honeymoon in Ubud in 2001 of the Mekar Sari all-women’s gamelan orchestra. If you’ve never heard gamelan music before, I strongly encourage you to give it a listen. The sound is like nothing else on the planet: overwhelming, intoxicating, and truly magical. This recording is NOT featured in Midnight at the Casa Luna, nor am I associated with ZBS productions.

I’d like to thank Tom Lopez and Aaron Ximm (www.quietamerican.org) for inspiring me to make this recording by their examples.

Welcome to the final installment of a three-part essay discussing the supernatural in contemporary German h?rspiel. Today I?ll recommend three outstanding contemporary German audio dramas (with links to Mp3 samples) and finish up by considering what the thriving German audio drama market might teach the struggling American one.

Let?s get to the heart of the matter: the productions themselves. The following three h?rspiele releases are among the best of the contemporary boom. Naturally in a field this big there are many other titles I could have chosen: tune in to future Malleus columns for further coverage.

THREE OUTSTANDING CONTEMPORARY GERMAN AUDIO DRAMAS

Geisterj?ger John Sinclair: Der Anfang

by WortArt / L?bbe Audio

Geisterj?ger John Sinclair: Edition 2000 is the supernatural detective serial that kick-started the audio drama boom in Germany back in 1999, and it’s still going strong. It?s an action-packed blend of adventure and horror themes, and very pulpy in an old-school manner. Der Anfang (The Beginning) is a deluxe production with an even larger cast than normal and a cinematic sweep. As you might guess, it concerns the title hero’s first brush with the forces of darkness. Der Anfang sold so well that it became the first audio drama to crack Germany?s music charts. There are currently 42 Geisterj?ger John Sinclair CDs in release, with more in production.

Sample tracks: http://www.sinclairhoerspiele.de/downloads.php

Gabriel Burns #1: Der Fl?sterer (The Whisperer)

by Universal Music Family Entertainment.

Another supernatural serial, this is one of the most sophisticated h?rspiel productions on the market. Gabriel Burns is a bit like Chris Carter?s X-files in terms of generating creepy atmosphere and keeping tantalizing, unanswered questions forever just beyond the listener?s reach. Where John Sinclair is over-the-top action, Burns is restrained, subtle, and genuinely frightening. It also has some of the best, most atmospheric soundscape design I’ve heard anywhere. (Another haunting German serial, Edgar Allen Poe, comes very close.) Where John Sinclair audio dramas are adaptations from a book series, this original audio drama series inspired a book series. Gabriel Burns recently concluded its opening 22 CD story arc and is currently on its 28th release. This one is a true masterpiece in the making.

Gabriel Burns #1: Der Fl?sterer was released on CD and in a special DVD edition with Dolby Digital 5.1. Sound.

Sample tracks: www.gabriel-burns.de (click folgen (“episodes”) on the side, then click on an album cover and a list of sample tracks will appear.)

Gruselkabinett #3: Die Familie des Vampirs

(?The Family of Vampires?, adapted from a short story by A. K. Tolstoi)

by Titania Medien

Gruselkabinett isn’t a serial, but an expanding anthology of dramatized horror classics. I’m particularly fond of this series because of its high caliber acting, excellent production values, and willingness to tackle more obscure tales alongside the standards (while they do cover Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Phantom of the Opera, they publish even more stories off the beaten track – something I wish more English-language producers would do. Instead of recording the umpteenth English audio dramatization of Dracula, how about adapting it’s little-known prequel, Dracula’s Guest? Gruselkabinett did both.)

Die Familie des Vampirs is probably Gruselkabinett?s most critically acclaimed release, and for good reason: it’s one of the best vampire tales I’ve encountered anywhere, in any medium. Essentially it concerns an isolated peasant family in the dead of winter, a visiting stranger, and a breed of vampire that prefers to stalk those who loved it in life. The story begins when a father’s attempt to kill a local vampire goes amiss, and he returns to his wife and children – changed. It?s a harrowing fable about the dark power of denial and the insatiability of love.

Sample tracks: http://www.titania-medien.de/gruselkabinett_3.php

That wraps it up for my top three German audio drama recommendations to beginners. Now here are some ruminations on the

FIVE LESSONS FROM THE HOERSPIEL-BOOM FOR AMERICAN PRODUCERS:

1. Get ‘em while they’re young!

Germany?s audience for audio drama was built in the 1970?s and 80?s through mass-market cassette releases aimed predominantly at children. The explosion of talent today and the willingness of Germans to support it with their Euros is largely a product of childhood exposure to the medium. In the USA companies like ZBS managed to do this to a lesser degree, but German companies had a big advantage: their audio dramas could be purchased from mainstream stores. These days in the USA there are plenty of music stores and bookstores with children?s sections, but the audio drama presence on their shelves is practically nonexistent. In some ways the audio drama scene in the United States is much like the comic book scene: it?s aging.

It?s well recognized that the future of comic books as a viable American popular art is very much in doubt because children don’t read them any more: kids who might once have read comic books are playing video games, browsing the internet and watching home videos instead. Rather than rise to this challenge, major publishing houses like Marvel and DC have largely given up on attracting children and focused on milking their already existing, older fanbase more effectively. Many long-time comic book professionals cite this trend as a sign that their industry has no future.

Is the contemporary U.S. audio drama scene much different? If children aren?t introduced to compelling audio drama, either commercially or over the airwaves, where will tomorrow?s paying audience (or for that matter, tomorrow?s creators) come from? In Germany children?s h?rspiele are still being produced in substantial numbers along with the more adult-oriented material aimed at nostalgic 30-somethings. There is actually a young company in the U.S.A., founded by Jens Hewerer, that is producing English-language audio dramas in the h?rspiel tradition for English-speaking kids. Everyone with a stake in the future of this artform should wish him luck. You can read more about Mr. Hewerer’s company and personal quest here: http://www.giddio.com/AboutUs.html.

2. Price low to sell

Some audio dramatists seem to take their CD pricing cues from the music industry. This puts them at a serious disadvantage, since music industry CDs are well promoted on radio and television, and audio dramas are not. By and large the music CD purchaser has heard the content already and knows exactly what they?re getting when they plop down $18, but the audio drama purchaser is usually making a gamble. Many people, particularly new listeners, won?t gamble at those prices. German audio dramas were inexpensive in the 1970?s and 80?s, and they?re still inexpensive today. Prices are usually low enough that customers can act on impulse without much reflection.

The great price leveler will probably be internet distribution, as more and more people get used to downloading MP3s than buying a physical product. You can already see the substantial price drops internet downloads have facilitated for companies like Big Finish and Graphic Audio. Internet distribution also allows listeners to sample before they buy. By allowing potential customers to discover contemporary talent for free, I think Radio Drama Revival provides the field with an exemplary service here. (That’s not self-aggrandizement – Fred runs this site and the show, I just write here.) I?d guess whatever losses producers might accrue by posting their work for free on RDR is offset by future purchases from customers who would otherwise never have heard of them. It?s still worth keeping in mind, though, that a $5 audio drama download is much more likely to move than a $15 dollar one. Especially if your line emphasizes:

3. Serials, serials, serials

The cassette adventures that laid the foundation for today?s German boom were predominantly serials, and serials still dominate both adult and children?s h?rspiele today. In the old days these serials were sold one episode per cassette, nowadays they sell one episode per CD. Even most multi-part stories are generally sold one CD at a time. German fans tend not to complain as long as they don?t have to wait too long for the conclusion of a multi-part adventure, largely because the prices of individual CDs are kept low. British company Big Finish also releases single CD episodes of multi-part serials, but they price the individual CDs so high that collecting the entire story becomes prohibitive fast.

The bottom line is, getting customers hooked on a serial story is a good way to net future sales. By advancing the story one CD at a time, you minimize your initial production costs. Customers won?t mind if you don?t gouge them and if each CD tells a satisfying story in itself in addition to being a link in a longer narrative chain. Serial publishing doesn?t require a fast rate of output. Adult German serials generally put out 6 releases a year at most, with the majority managing 3 to 4. Some epics even crawl along at a pace of one CD per year! (The 12 CD limited series Abseits der Wege (Off the Beaten Path) is one of those: after 2 years they?ve released two of the 12 episodes. I have to say, though, that each episode has been well worth the wait.)

Some German companies are beginning to collect their single-CD releases in cheaper boxed sets after the single CD versions have been out for a couple of years. This repackaging at a lower cost helps move product after interest has cooled. In many ways it?s highly reminiscent of the strategy used by today?s American comic book publishers, who release stories first as serialized magazines and later collect them into cheaper trade paperbacks.

4. Licensing

The contemporary German scene isn?t limited to licensed products: far from it. But there are a lot more professional productions using licensed properties in Germany than in the United States right now, and these properties get attention and bring new listeners into audio drama as a medium. These range from obvious big-name properties (Star Wars) to the slightly offbeat (Forgotten Realms, Hellboy). There?s a lot of potential for good licensed product, particularly when the chances for further film or television continuations are slim to none, because there?s a built-in fanbase eager for more. American publisher Dark Horse comics has released a further ?season? of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with original creator Joss Whedon overseeing the project and writing lead stories, much as he did for the T.V. show. It?s Dark Horse?s top seller.

5. Advertise?

This may be beyond most American producers’ budgets, but limited advertising on television and radio has benefited German series like John Sinclair and Gabriel Burns. For U.S. producers, internet advertising may be more viable.

Well, meine Damen und Herren, this concludes my introductory discussion of supernatural horror serials in contemporary German audio drama.

Next week I?ll switch to English material to begin a two-part review of ZBS productions? Jack Flanders: Midnight at the Casa Luna. Tune in for this and free Balinese Gamelan music recorded on location in Ubud, Bali by yours truly.

Tsch?ss!

Last week Malleus traced a rough history of German supernatural horror serials and considered their defining impact on the contemporary H?rspiel-Boom (audio drama explosion). What are some general characteristics of these new horror serial audios? I?ve made a list below of several trends I?ve noticed over the past 9 years, many of which differ from British and American tendencies. Read on to learn about casting practices, pricing, and for an answer to the strange riddle: Why do German audio horror serials rarely feature German heroes, and why are practically none of them set in Germany?

It?s a young scene:

Most prominent German audio dramatists are fairly young, prolific, and producing their best work now.

Audio dramas have found a profitable niche alongside audio books:

Audio books (H?rb?cher) are just as popular in Germany as they are in the U.S.A., but they haven?t driven audio dramas from the shelves in merry old Deutschland. Although audio books have a larger market, both genres are profitable and cohabit peaceably.

It remains to be seen whether that trend will last, given the considerably lower cost of audio book production. It?s much too early to make predictions, but more audio drama companies are testing the audiobook waters. Rather than introduce another drama series, Lausch is launching a new enhanced audiobook line of multi-voiced adaptations of the dark future Punktown stories. Big Finish, a private audio drama production company in the U.K., has been doing much the same recently with its recent Dr. Who-related audio book releases. Just diversification, or a sign of things to come?

Low cost:

Most German audio dramas are sold at a ?Schn?ppchen Preis? as cheap impulse buys, regardless of quality. With the dollar at record lows, the poor exchange rate considerably offsets this low cost for American buyers. Still, compared to American and British productions, they remain relatively inexpensive. Although music CDs in Germany typically sell for around 15,45 Euros, single CD audio dramas often run under 10 Euros, which is less than 7.68 British Pounds or 15 US dollars as of 03/15/08. By way of contrast, single cd releases of comparable quality (and casts about half the size) from British publisher Big Finish currently run $22.21 apiece.

Supernatural adventure is a driving force on the scene:

In the U.S.A. and to a lesser extent Britain (particularly outside of the BBC) science fiction dominates audio drama production. In Germany, sci-fi is definitely present (Takimo, Perry Rhodan, Star Wars), but supernatural and horror themes are more prevalent, in particular the occult detective sub-genre. The field is changing and diversifying, and children?s, mystery, fantasy and sci fi in particular constitute a sizable and growing presence. Still, the defining footprint of the supernatural sleuths remains clearly visible. It?s a legacy from the audiocassette horror serials of the 80?s, which were in turn inspired by the German horror pulp explosion that began in the late 60?s and caught fire in the early 70′s. See last week?s Malleus column for more on this.

Serials, both licensed and homegrown, lead the field:

CD serials sold one disc at a time are the driving force behind the German audio drama boom. Essentially these are the modern iteration of the Klassiker serials that were sold one cassette at a time in the 1980′s. Many of the new CD serials adapt licensed properties from Germany and the English-speaking world (books, movies, comics), although a healthy number of audio serials are self-originated by German creators. With notable exceptions like Graphic Audio and ZBS, there?s a bizarre lack of serials, licensed or otherwise, in the professional U.S. audio drama market right now. Outside of the BBC, England basically has a single private company specializing in licensed audio drama serials (Big Finish).

Non-German leading characters and locales predominate:

Strangely, most adult German audio drama serials feature leading characters who aren?t German and don?t live in Germany. Instead, the heroes are usually from English-speaking countries. Why?

Some of this can be traced back to the Grusel-Krimi supernatural crime genre that dominates the h?rspiel-field. When horror adventure pulps began in Germany the Hammer studios films coming out of England heavily inspired them. For many German writers of the time, England seemed a particularly exotic, Gothic setting for horror stories. This was certainly true for German-created British heroes John Sinclair and Tony Ballard. (Interestingly, Germany has had precisely the same exotic, Gothic appeal for many British writers, including Michael Moorcock (Hawkwind) and the creators of the Warhammer fantasy gaming universe.) Britain isn?t the only popular non-German locale for German writers. The first German horror pulp hero was American FBI agent Larry Brent. (Ah, those Germans. What American author would name his action hero ?Larry??) More recently Canada became the setting of Gabriel Burns, a superbly produced serial based in dark and mysterious ? wait for it – Vancouver.

The preference for English sounding names extended to the pseudonyms German pulp authors of the 1970?s adopted. Grusel-Krimi authors invented English pseudonyms ranging from the mild mannered (A.F. Morland, H.G. Francis) to the cartoonishly macabre (Jason Dark, Dan Shocker). As with English heroes and locales, English pseudonyms sounded more gothic and imposing to Germans than the authors? own German names. I?ve also heard it argued English names appealed because they seemed more cosmopolitan or international, presumably because of the dominance of English-language movies and television. While modern German writers generally use their own names (Volker Sassenberg hasn?t started calling himself “A.S. Jameson” or “Bob Evil”), so much material from the early pulps is still being mined for audio drama scripts that English pseudonyms remain highly visible.

Personally, I think Germany?s infamous post WWII guilt complex also plays a role in the continuing vogue for non-German heroes adventuring in English-speaking homelands (none of the audio dramas, of course, are actually in English). A number of German friends have told me they find the notion of fictional German heroes laughable. From an American perspective this is utterly bizarre. Americans generally prefer to consume stories about American heroes. Even when exotic locales are involved, there?s usually a (white male) American hero in the starring role.

All right, Americans are too stuck on themselves, particularly us white males. Still, I find Germany?s aversion to German heroes more than a bit sad. I hope someday a German audio drama producer will make a Grusel-Krimi serial set in Germany featuring credible, heroic German protagonists.

But I?m not holding my breath.

Large casts are the norm:

German casts tend to be big in horror, science fiction and fantasy audio dramas (and probably in other genres that I?m less familiar with). It?s common for single-CD German audio dramas to have casts of 15 professional actors or more. I can only speculate why. Perhaps German actors are less costly than their American and British counterparts. That would make a certain amount of sense, given that the audience for German-speaking work is quite a bit smaller than for English-language productions. German fans? limited tolerance for double- or repertory-style casting, both of which are common money and time saving devices in British and American audio drama, may also be a factor. (There are some German series, like Danger, that do use repertory casting, but Danger isn?t one of the better selling series, and I?ve seen a fair number of Germans complaining about its repetitious casts on bulletin boards.) I?ve even read angry complaints from German fans about the same actor playing two different roles in sequential episodes. Fan sentiment like that would put ZBS, Graphic Audio, Big Finish and countless other English-language audio drama producers right out of business.

Casts are fully professional and feature highly talented actors:

German actors are superlative. I?d put them up against the best the English-speaking world has to offer, including the BBC and Yuri Rasovsky?s Hollywood Theater of the Ear. Today most h?rspiel actors are drawn from Germany?s large synchro-sprecher (dubbing) industry, which primarily creates German dubs of American and British t.v. shows and movies. German dubbers, unlike their American counterparts from 70?s kung-fu films or modern anime, are excellent actors in their own right, so much so that many Germans prefer them to the original Hollywood actors? voices.

Since German synchro actors are most known to their German audience by the American actors they dub, some German audio dramas even advertise with those American actors? names. (?Featuring the German voices of Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie, and Jack Nicholson!?) It?s ironic since audio drama is one area where German actors get to originate roles themselves, particularly when it comes to genres that are too expensive to produce in visual mediums. Germany hasn?t been a major film-producing center since the Weimar republic (this doesn?t mean there aren?t still great German films getting made, but there isn?t a German equivalent to Hollywood anymore), but in audio you will hear the most lavish productions imaginable. This is particularly true of genres like fantasy and sci-fi that are financially out of reach for German film directors working out of Germany. (Remember, Roland Emmerich made his films and fortune in Hollywood. And compared to many German audio drama producers he isn?t very talented.) Years ago RTL television did attempt a Geisterj?ger John Sinclair TV series, but low budget special effects made the supernatural show a farce. Volker Sassenberg?s supernatural epic Gabriel Burns might have made a fantastic TV show, but it would never get produced in Germany.

Repetitious use of music tracks:

This is a noticeable weakness of many German h?rspiele. While there are significant exceptions, many German h?rspiel serials tend to use the same music tracks in each episode rather than hire a composer to individually score each one. In some cases these tracks aren?t even produced or commissioned by the drama publisher, but licensed from vendors of stock music. As a result, some different audio drama serials even share the same music tracks. If you want to get a taste of what this canned music sounds like, listen to the ?Dick Dynamo? episode that was posted on this website on March 7^th. The music used in ?Dynamo? is the same that is used in the John Sinclair and Gespenster-Krimi lines. I should note, though, that those music tracks are much more crisply and professionally implemented in the German serials than in ?Dynamo?.

This is an area where British companies like Big Finish and American ones like ZBS really shine, as all of their productions, even serial episodes, are scored individually. As a result, each adventure has its own atmosphere and unique feel. Many German audio drama serials are more like T.V. shows that feature the same canned tunes in every episode.

Sound design:

Generally speaking German sound design is superb. At this point there aren?t many stylistic generalizations you can make. From the splatterpunk ?shock-effekten? of Geisterj?ger John Sinclair: Edition 2000 to the subtle, state-of-the-art soundscapes of Gabriel Burns, it?s really a question of mood and directorial preference. The sound design in Gabriel Burns in particular is equal to anything I?ve heard from the U.S.A. and Britain, and superior to most of it.

And that?s it for this week. Next time I?ll present some potential lessons the thriving German audio drama scene could offer its poorer American cousin. I?ll also spotlight three outstanding productions from the H?rspiel-Boom, with links to free MP3 samples so you can hear what I’ve been talking about.

The inaugural column of Malleus kicks off a three part investigation of the seminal role of supernatural horror in the contemporary German audio drama explosion. Discover the first German radio drama, learn about German pulp novels, and experience the terror of Konga the Man-Frog.

As I said in the Malleus podcast interview here on Radio Drama Revival, I originally intended to write a 3-part discussion of the entire H?rspiel-Boom. At that time I actually thought doing an overview would be pretty straightforward. Ha! As passionately as I?ve followed the significant supernatural horror element of the Boom, there are many prominent genres I haven?t pursued. These include westerns, children?s serials, straight krimis (mysteries), and science fiction, among others, all of which have a significant history in German audio drama. So rather than pretend to cover everything I?ve decided to focus on what I know well: supernatural horror h?rspiele from 1999 to the present day. This article is NOT a comprehensive overview of the history of German h?rspiel, or even of the recent H?rspiel-Boom. Instead, my intent is to give non-German speakers a context for the many supernaturally oriented h?rspiele that will be featured in upcoming Malleus reviews.

All that said, I do believe and will argue that the Grusel-Krimi (“spine-tingling crime”) genre has inspired and defined the post-1999 Boom more than any other. After all, it wasn?t Benjamin Bl?mchen: Edition 2000 that kick-started the explosion at the turn of the millennium. So while I admit my preference for horror serials, there are historical reasons to privilege them that go beyond personal taste.

Without further ado, the essay I like to call:

REVENGE OF THE GRUSEL-KRIMIS

Americans are used to hearing about audio drama?s inevitable decline. News programs and music drive radio drama off the air and audio books crowd audio drama off store shelves. By and large the BBC and a few older auteurs who produce a small amount of work on an irregular basis define the professional field that remains. (Yuri Rasovsky, Tom Lopez, Phil Proctor, etc.). Audio drama is a constant fight against the odds for most if not all of these producers, one that gets harder all the time as public funding evaporates and audiences shrink. This reality is so deeply ingrained in us that it?s hard to imagine things might be different elsewhere. But they are. In 2002 Yuri Rasovsky stated, “In certain areas of the world where TV is difficult, because of terrain, such as mountainous countries like Greece or the Balkans, radio drama is still a going concern. The best I’ve heard of any in the world is Serbo-Croatian. They make the BBC look like amateurs.” (see http://www.audiotheater.com/yuri.html)

Rasovsky isn?t under any illusions that American producers can emulate the success of radio drama in Greece, the Balkans, or even the U.K.. Given the current state of public radio and the ubiquity of television, its highly unlikely we?re going to see a renaissance of public radio drama in the U.S.A. any time soon. But what might be learned from a successful foreign model driven entirely by the private sector? T.V. is as much a fixture in Germany as it is here. But audio drama has been thriving more than ever in Germany as a commercial enterprise for almost ten years. And although science fiction enjoys a healthy share of the market in Germany, it doesn?t lead the field there as it does in the USA. Since 1999, and arguably much earlier in the 1980?s, that role has belonged to the Grusel-Krimi, or supernatural detective serial. (The term “Grusel-Krimi” is heavily associated with the series Larry Brent, which was first published in Silber-Grusel-Krimis. A more neutral term for the entire genre would be Grusel. I?ve decided to go with Grusel-Krimi anyway because it emphasizes both the mystery/detective/adventure and fantastical/horror elements that the leading German audio serials have embraced.) Here I?ll sketch a brief history of the Grusel-Krimi genre and consider the powerful role they play in the commercial H?rspiel-Boom today. I hope this will be of interest, and possibly of use, to English speaking audio dramatists and their fans.

Germany has a long history of audio drama. The first, Hans Flesch?s Zauberei auf dem Sender (Sorcery on the Radio), aired on October 24, 1924, just two years after the first radio sketch, “A Rural Line on Education,” was broadcast in the U.S. on Pittsburgh?s KDKA station. You can download a modern remake of Zauberei for free here: http://www.mediaculture online.de/fileadmin/mp3s/zauberei_sender.mp3. Among other things, this radio drama contains the most quintessentially German statement you?ll ever hear: “Aber letzten Endes wollen wir die Ordnung und Sie die Unordnung, und sicher ist die Ordnung das Richtige und die Unordnung das Falsche.” (But finally, we want Order and you want Disorder, and certainly Order is right and Disorder is wrong.) The villain of the piece, a chaotic sorcerer who torments an anal retentive radio broadcaster, might be viewed as a prophetic antecedent of the heavy supernatural bent in contemporary German audio drama.

But Germany?s current wave doesn?t descend directly from the public radio legacy of Zauberei, and for the most part it isn?t being broadcast. Rather, the CD-based H?rspiel-Boom traces its commercial roots to the audiocassette and LP adventures that German studios like Europa and Tonstudio Braun released in the 1970?s and 1980?s. Europa, Tonstudio Braun, and other companies published many genres, but one proved particularly influential: horror.

But what kind of horror? Traditional “Universal Monsters”-style horror had a prominent place in the 80?s pantheon of German audio drama. German authors like H.G. Francis (Hans Gerhard Franciskowsky) produced self-contained audio plays about classic monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and werewolves through Europa. Dramas of this kind are still being produced today: Dreamland Productions is recording modern takes on the H.G. Francis stories, and Titania-Medien?s Gruselkabinett line is doing outstanding adaptations of horror classics like Dracula and Carmilla. But it was really the occult detective serial, or Grusel-Krimi, from the 80?s scene that shaped the modern h?rspiel landscape more than anything else.

The occult detective serial? Grusel-Krimis? What the fahrvergn?gen are you talking about?

Good question. Occult detective serials are essentially a blend of pulp criminal adventure and supernatural horror, one British and American authors pioneered with limited success. Horror writers like William Hope Hodgson (Carnacki), Algernon Blackwood (John Silence), Seabury Quinn (Jules de Grandin), Manley Wade Wellman (John Thunstone), and more recently Brian Lumley (Titus Crow) have all taken a crack at investigators of the unknown. Many of their fictional creations first saw print in pulp magazines like Weird Tales, which ran from 1923 to 1954. German Grusel-Krimi authors started much later than their British and American pulp counterparts and, unlike them, never stopped writing. The first German Grusel-Krimi (most literally, “spine-tingling crime”) serial debuted in 1968 with the publication of Dan Shocker?s tale (J?rgen Grasm?ck) Larry Brent: Das Grauen schleicht durch Bonnards Haus (Horror creeps through Bonnard?s House).

Former chemist Jason Dark (Helmut Rellergerd) published his first Geisterj?ger John Sinclair story, Die Nacht des Hexers (Night of the Warlock), in 1973. He has since written well over 2,000 John Sinclair adventures, and is still cranking out new ones to this day. Ernst Vlcek?s and Neal Davenport?s (Kurt Luif) highly regarded D?monenkiller (Demon killer) serial likewise began in 1973. (Having read examples of all three, I can confirm that despite it?s name D?monenkiller is subtler and less formulaic than the others.) Although D?monenkiller concluded in 1977, the Zaubermond publishing house recently began publishing new adventures. (A new D?monenkiller audio drama series, not surprisingly, is in preparation.) The pulps (groschenromane, roughly equivalent to “dime novels”) die hard in Germany; nowadays those that do often return from the grave for a second commercial life.

All three of the serials mentioned above along with many others became the basis for Tonstudio Braun and Europa audio dramas in the 1980s. The German pulps already had a sizable fanbase that quickly gravitated to the dramatizations, and they became popular with children new to the source material as well. I?ve sampled some Tonstudio Braun Geisterj?ger John Sinclair adventures and Europa serials like Macabros and Larry Brent; to my ear they were probably well produced for their time, but today show their age and are more humorous than frightening. For pure camp, though, it?s hard to beat titles like Konga, Der Menschenfrosch (Konga the Man-Frog, from Dan Shocker?s Macabros serial.)

These and other single-cassette serial adventures made a strong impression on young listeners, and between the 80?s and the year 2000 many of their fans grew up. Some of those fans grew up to be talented producers whose work would far outshine the material that thrilled them as children.

Oliver D?ring was one of them. With WortArt, he went on to reinvent the Geisterj?ger John Sinclair series as Geisterj?ger John Sinclair: Edition 2000 in 1999.

Many date this revival as the beginning of the contemporary H?rspiel-Boom; D?ring himself traces the Boom?s start to the 1980?s cassettes that inspired him. Regardless of where you place the Boom’s beginning, most would agree that the Tonstudio Braun / Europa era had diminished by 1999, and that WortArt was initiating a new phase. The Edition 2000 Sinclair adventures, much better produced and acted than their 80?s predecessors (although Tonstudio Braun loyalists will hate me for saying that), met with considerable financial success. Germans weaned on the 80?s cassettes had gone on to get jobs and make money, and they were happy to spend it on this nostalgic comeback. John Sinclair: Der Anfang (John Sinclair: The Beginning) sold so well that it made Germany?s music charts in 2002, an unprecedented feat for an audio drama. Can you imagine, say, ZBS’ Ruby making the top 40 in the U.S.A.?

After Sinclair opened the way, other new audio dramas and revivals followed. Not all of them were occult detective serials, of course, but many of the flagship titles were. Today many of the big h?rspiel companies have at least one supernatural investigator in their stable, and more are on the way. Even brand new properties like the pseudo-historical Schwarze Sonne set in the 19^th century and modern thrillers like Schattenreich and Gabriel Burns are essentially updates of the occult detective legacy. It?s gotten to the point that Oliver D?ring now worries publicly about over-saturation of the niche he revived with Sinclair. But while a culling is probably inevitable, it hasn?t happened yet. Rather than topping out, the h?rspiel market has been steadily growing and diversifying since 1999, with new companies bringing more science fiction, fantasy, mystery, children?s, and thriller releases to the scene. Even D?ring himself, rather than cutting back, has chosen to roll the dice and begin another supernatural investigator series (the adult-oriented Don Harris: Psycho-Cop). When the market does reach its tipping point, I don?t anticipate a major crash but a gradual process of weeding out weaker material. H?rspiel looks to remain a vital pop subculture in Germany for some time to come.

Will Grusel-Krimis retain their preeminent place within the adult audio drama market? I?m inclined to say no, but despite steady diversification there are still more Grusel-Krimis published than any other genre, and their number is only increasing. Even if they lose their leading position, they will probably always constitute a significant portion of contemporary German audio drama. Certainly there are no signs that science fiction will take the crown from supernatural horror serials, so in this respect German and USA markets are likely to remain distinct.

For further information about the Grusel genre check out the following links:

In English:

http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2005_08_21_archive.html

(Scroll down for a frank and not entirely flattering discussion of German horror pulps.)

http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2005_11_06_archive.html

(English discussion of the first Grusel-Krimi, Larry Brent.)

In German:

http://gruselromane.de/specials/entwicklung/entwicklung.htm

(The most thorough account you?ll find on the net about the history of Grusel Heftromans from 1968 until the present day. The entire site is a treasure trove of information for those interested in the genre.)

Tune in next week for a look at common characteristics of Grusel-Krimi audio dramas and an answer to the strange question: “Why do adult German audio serials rarely feature German heroes?”

Download audio file (rdr-bonus-chris-dueker-german-audio.mp3)

Introduction to Malleus with Chris Dueker

Welcome to Malleus: Vibrations from the Middle Ear, a weekly review column of English and German language audio drama, audio books, and other spoken word recordings. Malleus came about for two reasons: 1) to provide critical reviews of spoken arts recordings that rarely receive them and 2) to introduce English-speakers to the remarkable German phenomenon colloquially termed the ?H?rspiel-Boom?. To that end this English language column will cover both English (U.S.A., Canada, Britain, and Australia) and German productions. Malleus will tend to focus on science fiction, fantasy, and horror, three fantastical genres that have enjoyed considerable success over radio?s phantom airwaves. However, from time to time other genres will be featured. Readers can expect to see reviews of both old and new productions, from Old Time Radio and obscure LPs to cutting edge MP3 downloads. Most recordings discussed will be in print; a few will require scouring ebay or making a trip to your local library.

Aside perhaps from a willingness to bring the hammer down hard on inferior work, what distinguishes Malleus most from other review columns is its bi-lingual emphasis. There are a few decent review sites focusing on English-language audio drama and more devoted to German productions, but as far as I know this is the first Internet column to address both. Why do it? Honestly, audio drama has been my favorite pastime for twenty-five years, and English and German are the languages I know. That said, Germany?s h?rspiel (audio play) industry really is something special. You might think every country would have its own vibrant audio drama scene: not so. France for example, whose native tongue is admired the world over, strangely lacks a significant audio drama tradition. Germany not only has one, it bucks the contemporary trend of declining production common to English-speaking countries. On the contrary, Germany has been enjoying a true ?audio drama boom? for the past ten years that exceeds anything in the country?s history. That?s right, folks: not only are professional German audio drama companies thriving, new ones are entering the market every year. It?s gotten to the point that German companies are now licensing more major American properties for audio drama than their American counterparts are (Star Wars, Hellboy, TSR?s Forgotten Realms, to name a few). Today Germany is producing work on a scale and level of sophistication that rivals the best of what even the BBC has to offer. This column will open that world up to you.

Malleus will strive for 50 / 50 coverage of English and German language productions, so even if you?re not interested in the German scene there should be something to catch your eye. Variety will be emphasized: upcoming reviews consider English language productions Jack Flanders: Midnight at the Casa Luna by ZBS, The Buoy by Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater, Deathlands #73: Labyrinth by Graphic Audio, and German language productions John Sinclair by Wortart, Drizzt – Die Saga vom Dunkelelf #1 – Der Dritte Sohn by Lausch, and Chronik der Unsterblichen: Blutkrieg by ZYX Music, among others. All reviews will run approximately 2-4 typed pages and feature a 1 to 10 star rating.

So again, welcome. I hope you’ll find Malleus interesting, provocative, and illuminating to the dark passageways of your ears. And I’d like to express my sincere thanks to Fred Greenhalgh of Radio Drama Revival for hosting this column.

Chris Dueker
March 13, 2008

For the curious: The malleus of the column title is one of three ossicles in the middle ear, named for its shape (Latin for ?hammer?.) Along with the incus and stapes, the malleus transmits vibrations from the eardrum into waves of fluid in the inner ear.

Legal Nonsense: The title Malleus: Vibrations from the Middle Ear and all reviews posted in this column are copyright 2008 Chris Dueker. Reviews may not be reprinted or otherwise redistributed without permission. All opinions expressed in Malleus are my own, and do not reflect those of Radio Drama Revival.