NIGHT LIGHT #1 — EDITED BY FRED CAVE, — JUNE 2014 WERKPLAATS TYPOGRAFIE INTERVIEW WITH play us ‘Metropolis’, Reinforced, Paradox, DJ Hype, Foul DECEMBER 2007 – UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT Play, DJ Krystl, Source Direct and tunes. When you’re younger that stuff blows your mind. But then they, MARK FISHER: Vocals were always central to your they didn’t lose interest in it, but they got on with life and sound, but they have become even more important I was stuck for years. And I would still buy the tunes, and on this than they were on your first LP. my whole life was going on missions to buy tunes and try and impress ‘em by putting together compilations I BURIAL: I was brought up on old jungle tunes and thought that they would like. I thought I was holding a garage tunes had lots of vocals in but me and my brothers lighter up for that stuff, I’d cane Jaffa Cakes and make loved intense, darker tunes too, I found something I compilations, slip the odd garage tune in. And even when could believe in... but sometimes I used to listen to the I started making tunes I was trying to impress them, I still ones with vocals on my own and it was almost a secret am, but I think they hate my new tunes though. When thing. I’d love these vocals that would come in, not proper I grew up I thought everyone would be into jungle and singing but cut-up and repeating, and executed coldly. It garage tunes but hardly anyone I knew was, in the end. was like a forbidden siren. I was into the cut-up singing as much as the dark basslines. Something happens when MARK FISHER: Your music seems to be about the I hear the subs, the rolling drums and vocals together. To after effects of , about never actually experienc­ me it’s like a pure UK style of music, and I wanted to ing it. make tunes based on what UK underground hardcore tunes mean to me, and I want a dose of real life in there BURIAL: I’ve never been to a festival. Never been to a too, something people can relate to. rave in a field. Never been to a big warehouse, never been So when I started doing tunes, I didn’t to an illegal party, just clubs and playing tunes indoors or have the kit and I didn’t understand how to do it properly, whatever. I heard about it, dreamed about it. My brother so I can’t make the drums and bass sound massive, no might bring back these records that seemed really adult to loud sounds taking up the whole tune. But as long as it me and I couldn’t believe I had ’em. It was like when you had a bit of singing in it, it forgave the rest of the tune. It first saw Terminator or Alien when you’re only little. I’d was the thing that made me excited about doing it. Then get a rush from it, I was hearing this other world, and my I couldn’t believe that I’d done a tune that gave me that brother would drop by late and I’d fall asleep listening to feeling that proper real records used to, and the vocal was tunes he put on. the one thing that seemed to take the tune to that place. My favorite tunes were underground and moody but MARK FISHER: I suppose your contact with rave with killer vocals: ‘Let Go’ by Teebee, ‘Being With You through your brother is what makes your records so ’ by Foul Play. Intense, Alex Reece, Digital, , mournful: you know what is missing now, whereas Dillinja, EL­B, D­Bridge, Steve Gurley. I miss being on others might not even know what they are missing. the bus to school listening to DJ Hype mixes. Sometimes some other kids would get us tunes, I’d record off of BURIAL: I don’t know if it exists any more at all. A lot pirate radio all night. of those old tunes I put on at night and hear something in the tune that makes me feel sad, a few of my favour- MARK FISHER: You started off listening to music ite producers and DJs are dead now too and­ I hear this because of your older brother? hope in all those old tracks, trying to unite the UK, but they couldn’t, because the UK was changing in a differ- BURIAL: My older brother loved tunes, rave tunes, ent direction, away from us. Maybe the feeling of the UK jungle, he lived all that stuff, and he was gone, he was on in clubs and stuff back then, it wasn’t as artificial, self­ the other side of the night, almost. He was the one who aware or created by the internet. It was more rumour, wasn’t back, he was out there, going to places. He’d tell underground folklore. No mobile phones back then. us stories about it. We were brought up on stories about Anyone could go into the night and they had to seek it it. Leaving the city in a car and finding somewhere and out. Because you could see it in people, you could see it hearing these tunes, and he’d bring them back. He would in their eyes. Those ravers were at the edge at their lives, sit us down and play these old tunes, and later on he’d they weren’t running ahead or falling behind, they were just right there and the tunes meant everything. In the do it really fast. I sort of did the whole album in about 90s you could feel that it had been taken away from them. two weeks. Most of it in the final week. When I made this In club culture, it all became like super­clubs, magazines, a lot of things were wrong. It was nice to say, ‘fuck this’, trance, commercialized. All these designer bars would be I’m just going to make it well fast. So I’m quite defensive trying to be like clubs. It all got just taken. So it just went of it. When you’re making a tune and it’s really late… I militant, underground from that point. That era is gone, heard this thing on EastEnders about burning the candle now there’s less danger, less sacrifice, less journey to find at both ends with a flame-thrower, I was making tunes something. You can’t hide, the media clocks everything. in the middle of the night, if I didn’t have the vocal to The internet or whatever, but DMZ and FWD have that keep me awake, like singing a lullaby, trying to hypnotise deep atmosphere and real feeling, the true underground is myself so I didn’t fall asleep. still strong, I hear good new tunes all the time. MARK FISHER: It’s like a reverse lullaby in a way — MARK FISHER: says that the new album has a instead of sending you to sleep, it’s keeping you feeling of ‘downcast euphoria’, whereas the first one awake! With the first album, it felt like the references was just downcast. were early ­mid 90s jungle, whereas with the new one, it’s as if things have moved on two or three years, to BURIAL: When I listened to these old tapes, I took UK garage and 2­step. what these jungle MCs were telling me seriously. Rolling a tune out, I took it as a commandment about how to BURIAL: I love UK garage, I love 2step­ and Todd make a tune: roll it out, do it fast. I was into old hardcore, Edwards. For a long time I felt that no­ one liked it, some darkside, trying to do a properly dark record. Not this music people cussed it because they’re stupid, but its new, pumped up tech sound. I liked the old tunes, music for real people, those tunes still sound better than properly darkside like finding a body in a lift shaft: dank most stuff when you’re out. I don’t know many people moody tunes, suburban tunes. I want to go back to that who like tunes but I had one mate who had a car and let hardcore era of darkside someday, which would be rugged, me test my tunes, I always liked deeper night-time tunes, film samples just pitched up and down with strings. It a bit more rolling ­ garage, is half pulse, half sway, wasn’t just that pure monochrome thing, it was something so it sounds good in a car at night. else, it sounded like tearing through an empty building. I wanted to make a half euphoric But the thing is, I had this bunch of tunes for my second record. That was an older thing that UK underground album that were dark tunes, and I just scrapped them. I music used to have. I think that type of euphoria is a took ages on them. I was worrying, because after my first British thing, like UK tunes, old rave tunes used to be the album I felt a bit of pressure to follow it up. I worked masters of that, for a reason, to do with the rave, a half for hours on these tunes, and I was trying to learn these smile, half human endorphins and half something hyp- programmes. These tunes were darker, more technical, all notized by drugs. It was stolen from us and it never really the tunes sounded like some kind of weapon that was came back. Mates laugh at me because I like whale songs being taken apart and put back together again. But then I but I love ’em, I like vocals to be like that, like a night got sort of sick of them, because I spent so long on them, cry, an angel animal. Old hardcore tunes would throw I was moody about other things. So I wanted to make these sounds in, anything to create the rush, descent into a glowing record, I wanted to cheer myself up. Instead another world, like ‘Papua New Guinea’ by Future Sound of doing those dark tunes that took ages and were really of . love this one feeling, it only happens to you detailed, I wanted to make a record fast. Something when you’re out in the cold, when your down, this shiver warm, glowing, junglist and garagey. I was listening to attempts to warm you up, bring you back. For a moment these Guy Called Gerald tunes. I wanted to do vocals but you get this weird, eerie distant feeling like it’s just for I can’t get a proper singer like him. So I cut up acapellas you, you get taken out of yourself. Certain tunes just nail and made different sentences, even if they didn’t make that. So I had to do that, but have cut­up vocals and have sense but they summed up what I was feeling. I love those that slinky bumping feel to it, and not get weighed down Foul Play and Omni Trio tunes where it was just the girl in big drums and the big snares. With Garage the drums next door singing, So I got a lot of those quite low ­quality are taken back, they’re quite soft, it’s more about being vocals and started to pitch them up and down. You can slinky. They’re like a fishbone, a spine, an exoskeleton that cradles the sounds. It’s not about the deepest kick or the saying that you hadn’t produced it all in Sound Forge, biggest snare. The drums are more about trying to thread it’s a scam. sounds and vocals together, they flicker across the surface of the tune, it circles around you, its not just chopping BURIAL: Who? you up, its not about the sounds being big. MARK FISHER: People on the internet, saying he MARK FISHER: That’s the part of the reason you’re can’t possibly have done that whole album in Sound not happy with using sequencers? Forge.

BURIAL: Also because I don’t know how to use them! BURIAL: Really? Yeah well I did. I’ll leave those people to their internet or whatever. Yeah I wish sometimes that MARK FISHER: Yeah, but you could learn! But things I’d gone to college to learn music production, but other often sound sequenced when they are. times I’m like “no, fuck, I’m happy I didn’t”. I don’t really go on the internet, it’s BURIAL: That’s happened to a lot of music. It’s detailed like a ouija board, it’s like letting someone into your head, in a boring way. I’m not into big intros, because if you’ve behind your eyes. It lets randoms in. got a big intro, the rest of the tune is forever the rest of the tune, and the intro’s forever the intro. You can never MARK FISHER: The tracks you made and discarded. get lost in it, you know where you are in most tunes, and Do they still exist? that just takes away the only reason a tune should exist to me, I can’t relate to grey music. I like tunes that just dive BURIAL: Some of them I lost because my computer’s straight in, there’s a jump off and once you’re in it, the dead. But I’ve got a few of them and I might resurrect awareness that you’re two minutes into a tune, or four them. I lost faith. I want to learn but its difficult, I’ve minutes into a tune is gone. That’s how I like my tunes. made mistakes. Next album maybe I’ll gather my forces, Or something like Robert Hood, just pure presence, make a true darkside Burial album. Step up and do it. shark­like, elements woven together. You can sense them sitting there rolling out the tune. MARK FISHER: One of the greatest things about your music is the sense of place, and it’s so specific to MARK FISHER: Your tunes are like being in a fog, it’s South London. When I first heard it, I lived in South diffuse, but it’s all around you. London and as I listened to the LP walking around, it was a perfect fit. BURIAL: Then a couple of sounds might come up, glow, the rest of them sink down and burn out. BURIAL: Thanks for saying that. I spend a lot of time wandering around London, I always have. Sometimes it’s MARK FISHER: I saw you mention it in another inter­ because I’ve got somewhere to go, sometimes it’s because I view, that when you’re used to making tunes and haven’t got anywhere to go. So I’d be wandering endlessly, looking at a screen, you can just see that grid when getting in places. Being on your own listening to head- you hear the tunes. phones is not a million miles away from being in a club surrounded by people, you let it in, you’re more open to it. BURIAL: I’ve seen people using sequencers and I’ve tried Sometimes you get that feeling like a ghost touched your hard to use them but it’s blocks in different colours and heart, like someone walks with you. In London, there’s a I’m only used to just seeing the waves. I don’t need to kind of atmosphere that everyone knows about but if you listen much to the drums because I know they look nice, talk about it, it just sort of disappears. London’s part of like a fishbone, rigged up to be kind of skitty, sharp. My me, I’m proud of it but it can be dark, sometimes recently tunes are a bit rubbish and messy but it’s all I know. One I don’t even recognize it. day I want to make a tune people can have a dance to, It’s about being on a night bus, or I’ve tried. with your mates, walking home across your city on your own late at night, or being in a situation with your MARK FISHER: What did you think when people were girlfriend or boyfriend, or coming back from a club, or putting tunes on an falling asleep. If you’re well into stuff. Everyone knows those sorts of feelings. I wanted to tunes, your life starts to weave around them. I’d rather do songs about that low-key­ stuff. There are a couple of hear a tune about real life, about the UK, than some US tunes with the vocal to do with angels on it. Sometimes hiphop. “I’m in the club with your girl” type thing. I I’d be hearing a song… I was worrying, I’d made all these love r&b tunes and vocals but I like hearing things that dark tunes, and I played ’em to my mum, and she didn’t are true to the UK, like drum&bass and dubstep. Once like them. I was going to give up, but she was sweet, you’ve heard that underground music in your life, other telling me, “just do a tune, fuck everyone off, don’t worry stuff just sounds like a fucking advert, imported. about it.” My dog died, and I was totally gutted about that. She was just like, “make a tune, cheer up, stay up MARK FISHER: Even though your music really late, make a cup of tea”. And I rang her mobile twenty captures what it’s like to be in the UK, it connects minutes later and I’d made that ‘Archangel’ tune, and I with other people outside Britain too. was like, “I’ve made the tune, the tune you told me to make.” And I heard this vocal and it doesn’t say it but it BURIAL: If you alone could hear someone upset on the sounds like ‘archangel’. I like pitching down female vocals other side of the world, then maybe then you could do so they sound male, and pitching up male vocals so they something about it. I was once in these mountains, you’d sound like a girl singing. It can sound sexy as fuck. see these fires, other people sleeping out in the mountains, traders across the border, and that gives you this feeling, MARK FISHER: That works. When I listen to the night time, awareness of other people sleeping. But all it record, I can’t work out whether the vocals belong is just a fire light. You see their firelight and you know to males or females. And angels aren’t supposed to they are there, that’s all you need. That’s what ties cities have no gender. to places that aren’t together, deserts, forests, people. You watch over your city or area at night, you see the distant BURIAL: Really? Well that works nice with my tunes, lights, fires burning in other places. kind of half boy half girl, but that can be dark too. Sometimes in a mirror people see the devil’s face for a MARK FISHER: Angels are mentioned a few times on second, that wrong aspect, the eyes, in your own. When the album. Why is that? you are young you are pushed around by forces that are nothing to do with you. You’re lost, most of the time BURIAL: You see people, and you’re disconnected from you don’t understand what’s going on with yourself, with them, they mean fuck­all to you, but other times you anything. can invest everything in someone you don’t even know, silently believe in them, it might be on the underground MARK FISHER: I’ve read you say that you think it’s ok or in a shop or something. You hope people are doing that for women to like your music, that people shouldn’t with you as well. Some people, even when they’re quite be frightened of making tunes that women will like. young, and they’re in difficulty, maybe taking a battering in their life, but they still handle themselves with grace. BURIAL: But girls love the dark tunes too. I understand I hope most people can be like that, hold it together, I that moody thing, but some dance music is too male. wanted this album to be for people in that situation. It’s dry, Some jungle tunes had a balance, the glow, the It’s easy to fall away and fuck up and moodiness that comes from the presence of both girls and for many people there’s no safety net. Sometimes one boys in the same tune, there’s tension because it’s close, tune can mean everything, it’s like a talisman. but sometimes perfect together. Men sometimes exist in this place where they don’t have a fucking clue what girls MARK FISHER: The people on the album seem like go through and vice versa. I was brought up most by my wounded or mutilated angels: angels whose wings mum, I’m my mum’s son. I look like her. I am her. I own have been clipped, or who have been trapped or female dogs. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but with betrayed. my new album — blokes might be, like, “what the fuck is this?” But hopefully their girlfriends will like it. BURIAL: Yeah. When you think of some of things people go through, everyday troubles, relationship things, other MARK FISHER: But I think a lot of men want more than blokey music is giving them. they are hidden by a veil, rather than being directly heard. BURIAL: Yeah? They should listen to some Todd Edwards, his tunes melt anyone. People are different, but BURIAL: Yeah, euphoria trapped in a vial. Or a silencer. the media, the world has made them afraid to create their Volume’s like a proximity to something. Everyone in their own space around themselves, when they should just life has heard a muffled conversation from next door close their eyes and trust in themselves. Sometimes a man where you can’t hear the words, but you know that people needs a break from the darkness, and just needs a dose of are shouting. Or you’re on stairs, and you hear people chirpy, buzzing tunes. downstairs, and you’re aware of something not being right, just by the tone of someone’s voice. Even when MARK FISHER: Your music is very visual. I suppose you don’t understand, when you’re younger, that kind of that’s partly the influence of films? You’ve talked meaning in the sound, it makes you hold your breath. It’s about that sound from ‘Alien’ being one of your like when dogs go quiet when there’s a storm coming. favourite sounds. MARK FISHER: There’s a lot of pain in the records. Is BURIAL: The motion tracker, yeah, and the dropship, that personal? the sentry guns. My big brother would play that sound to me when I was little, and tell me the stories from the film. BURIAL: (pause) Yeah, maybe. He recorded it on a tape. He would tell me about that I don’t know anything about this kind motion tracker sound, and ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens’ are some of music, but I love Sam Cooke. I don’t know what it was of the scariest films. But he would only show me the bit about his songs, but he’d have some songs, and things on where they were loading up the weapons, but he’d say, the surface were normal or happy, he’d be singing about “you’re too young, I won’t show you the rest, but I’ll tell having a party, there’s cokes in the iceboxes or whatever, you about it”. I love the sound of the motion tracker, you and everything’s glowy, but underneath, it’s like he’s can feel the fear of the empty spaces ahead, it’s like sonar. talking about something else, the last party on earth. I like Blade Runner but I’m only obsessed with one scene Something in his voice. I’d rather do something like that in it, the bit where he’s sitting at those cafes in the rain. I than some icy cold , to try and get a bit love rain, like being out in it. Sometimes you just go out of that in it. Because when something’s glowing, if some- in the cold, there’s a light in the rain, and you’ve got this thing’s nice, it doesn’t mean that it’s not surrounded by little haven, and you’re hanging round like a moth — I cold things, bad things. love moths too and that’s why I love that scene. The glow would only show up if there’s darkness around it. Relentless dark, what I call MARK FISHER: Is there a connection between crackle ‘Dark TM’, doesn’t sound dark in the end. and rain? MARK FISHER: The faceless thing. Is it just a personal BURIAL: Yeah. But I partly use the rain to cover up the thing? lameness of my tunes. BURIAL: Yeah, I’m just a well low-key person. I want to MARK FISHER: It’s a bit like when they put on the be unknown, because I’d rather be around my mates and mist on [the PlayStation game] Silent Hill because family than other things, but there’s no need to focus on they didn’t have the memory power to render a fully­ it. Most of the tunes I like, I never knew what the people realised environment. who made them looked like anyway. It draws you in. You could believe in it more. I like it if it’s more secret, people BURIAL: Oh, really? Dark. I like Silent Hill. If you hide can get into the tunes more. I just want to be in a symbol, sounds in the mist. It’s like a veil across the far wall of the a tune, the name of a tune. It’s not like it’s a new thing. tune. It’s one of the old underground ways and it’s easier. Everyone goes on about themselves, MARK FISHER: That’s really important. It’s like the they reveal everything and give it away. It’s an obsession euphoric things are all the more euphoric because in London, people and the media are too blatant, trying to project this image, prove themselves and trying to be that was before I’d made the album so we wanted to put something. They should just hold back a bit, it’s sexier. out something that sounded like it came off the first I wanna be out of here. I respect album, but hinted at something else. working hard but I dread a day job. Or a job interview. I’ve got a truant heart, I just want to be gone. I’d be in the MARK FISHER: I’m glad you moved in the direction kitchens, the corridors at work, and I’d be staring at the you have. There’s lots of emotion in the culture at panels on the roof, clocking all the maintenance doors, the moment, but it’s very sentimental and cheap. dreaming about getting into the airducts. The real pain doesn’t get articulated.

MARK FISHER: Looking for a space away from other BURIAL: When you’re young, things seem much more people? serious in a way. The most trivial thing you treat like the biggest deal in the world, you get kids doing dark, sad BURIAL: Kind of. A portal. As a kid I used to dream things, being way too upset about something because about being put in the bins, escaping from things, they can’t get perspective on it. And younger as well. without my mum knowing she’d put me out in the bins. Some people get suicidal because they’ve been bullied by So I’m in a black plastic bag outside a building, and someone at school, but if they waited one more week it’s hearing the rain against it, but feeling alright, and just the end of term. To a kid you can’t explain that very well. wanting to sleep, and a truck would take me away. It’s I’ve been in situations and there’s no rule book of what stupid. you’re meant to do. But then you might listen to some song, some pop song, that gets it just right. Like I love MARK FISHER: Did you have a sense of what it was EastEnders and I’ll be watching that, and someone in like on the other side? that, Stacey Slater, will just say it perfectly.

BURIAL: Yeah. We all dream about it. I wish something MARK FISHER: Depression is increasingly common was there. But even if you fight to see it, you never see amongst teenagers… anything. Because you know when you have a dream, and in your dream you have the weight of the decisions in BURIAL: They seem to have people all around them, but you, but it has that kind of dream-like­ ease of everything, that’s actually not true. Sometimes you’re surrounded by like the dream city. You’re walking round London in your mates but you’re not surrounded by friends. You feel pro- dreams, everything is alright, but you wake back in real tective of people, because no matter who we are, we all life and it’s not like that. You don’t have a choice. You’d be return to quite a vulnerable place, a flat, mates, a family, on the way to a job, but you’re longing to go down this a room or whatever. You can see through all that stuff, a other street, right there, and you walk past it. No force lot of young people artificially take on adult issues, that on earth could make you go down there, because you’ve have maybe been pushed at them, or maybe they’re living got to traipse to wherever. Even if you escape for a second, out an adult relationship, proper life issues, maybe their people are on your case, you can’t go down old Thames family isn’t looking out for them anymore, other serious side and throw your mobile in. stuff that you can’t take lightly. I’ve seen that if you take on that stuff early on, it fucks you up. My new tunes MARK FISHER: This sounds like H.G. Wells’ short are about that, wanting an angel watching over you, story ‘The Door in the Wall’. In it, a child discovers when there’s nowhere to go and all you can do is sit in an enchanted garden hidden in mundane London McDonalds late at night, not answering your phone. streets. But whenever he sees the door that leads to the garden again, he can’t make himself go through MARK FISHER: Your tunes connect this time with a it. He’s always dragged away by the pull of the worldly. different era, one that’s gone. Your first album sounded so defini­ tive, I wondered what you would do with the second BURIAL: I hear tunes, I seek out tunes that used to be one. everything to someone but they probably can’t listen to them now. I know there are tunes I’ve put on, I’ve seen BURIAL: Kode9 chose the 12”, because people cry, Moving Shadow tunes, old tunes, because this music is old enough now for it to mean that. Even a single swear, if you heard them... One girl told me the scariest sound, they’ll hear a sound and it’ll just slay them. And thing I ever heard. Some of these stories would stop a few you’re right, culture doesn’t seem to notice this. Where words earlier than seemed right, they don’t play out like a I’m from you’re more likely to be sitting around talking film, they’re too simple, too everyday, slight, those stories about a Rufige Kru or tune, how much it meant ring true and I never forgot them. Sometimes maybe you to you, than some other kind of music. I like normal life. see ghosts on the underground with an empty Costcutters It’s weird now, people die and they’re still on Facebook or plastic bag, nowhere to go. They are smaller, about 70% whatever the fuck else. smaller than a normal person, smaller than they were in life. MARK FISHER: What other influences do you have outside music? MARK FISHER: Where I live now, in Suffolk, was where James set many of his stories. Some of the BURIAL: PlayStation games. A lot of my drums are just names of the places in the stories are thinly coded people picking up new ammo and weapons in games. I names of Suffolk towns. love shells falling to the floor, power-­ups, like when you get extra life. It would be good if you could do that in real BURIAL: I love that, like old churchyards, factories, life: pick up extra lives, fight end­ of ­level ­guardians down places out of the way. I used to get taken away to the by the shops, use cheat-­modes. I spent all my pocket middle of nowhere, by the sea, I love it out there, because money trying to complete Silent Scope at the arcade. I when it’s dark, it’s totally dark, there’s none of this was brought up on that stuff. My Dad when I was really ambient light London thing. We used to have to walk little, sometimes he used to read me M.R. James stories. back and hold hands and use a lighter. See the light, see On the South Bank last year, I was walking along, and I where you were and then you’d walk on, and the image of found a book of M.R. James ghost stories. I bunked that where you’ve just were would still be on your retina. You day off from my day job and I got this book, and now I’m couldn’t see anything, but you’d see stars. Loads of the well into M.R. James ghost stories. drums on the new album are just a lighter. I love lighters and Swan Vesta matches, the drums on every tune are the MARK FISHER: You’re joking, really? same, this little noise. The thing I love about M.R. James, it’s BURIAL: There’s a few ghost stories, the one that fucked almost like you learn a lesson off the stories, which is to me up when I was little. ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To be obsessed with a similar kind of effect until you get it You My Lad’. Something can betray how sinister it is right, because you’re basically circling similar ideas. It’s even at a distance. Something weird happens with M.R. not about things sounding the same, they’re just, I don’t James, because they’re short and I don’t read much — and know what the word would be, singular. Like Photek used even though it’s in writing, there’ll be a moment, when to be. The techniques hit you between the eyes because the person meets the ghost, where you can’t quite believe they are so fucking focused, obsessed by the same devices. what you’ve read, you go cold, just for those few lines With M.R. James, it’s that ghost story thing, someone when you glimpse the ghost for a second, or he describes told me this story, or I knew this person — it’s a device the ghost face. It’s like you’re not reading any more. In to deliver the story into your world. Urban legends get that moment it burns a memory into you that isn’t yours. woven so you’re unable to be sure it’s untrue. A statisti- He says something like, “there’s nothing worse for a cian would say: of all the millions of ghost stories ever human being than to see a face where it doesn’t belong”. told, what percentage would have to be true for ghosts to But if you’re little, and you’ve got an imagination which exist? The answer is that only one story would have to be is always messing you up and darking you out, things like true. The new tunes are a tiny misdirection, so I can steal that are almost comforting to read. Also, there is nothing away unseen to the next place. worse than not recognizing someone you know, someone close, family, seeing a look in them that just isn’t them. I was once in a lock-in­ in a pub and the regulars there and some mates started telling these fucked up ghost stories from real life, maybe that had happened to them, and I