"All things digested have a similar hue"

The Music of Matt Berry

Having released his first two albums himself, Matt Berry made his third long player Witchazel available for a one-day free download in 2009 before receiving a wider release via Acid Jazz two years later.

INFUSED with a WICKER MAN-like Englishness, the music and lyrics of Bedfordshire-born Matt Berry consistently astounds. With comedic star turns in GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE and THE IT CROWD, his acting roles often see him flesh-out a unique vocal range, which has resulted in a lucrative side career in voice-overs. It’s a rich, womanising tone that strikes as if some noble medieval player is recounting adventures in his twilight days. Influenced by late 60s/early 70s psych-rock, Berry avoids pure tribute or pastiche by an immersion with wind-swept landscapes and askew texts. Inspired by Mike Oldfield, Berry has realised his childhood dream by playing almost everything on his albums bar drums, sax and clarinet. The actor/musician has also produced a series of idiosyncratic tunes which has lined everything from his undervalued BBC3 dark comedy SNUFF BOX to the spot-on JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR parody AD/BC: A ROCK OPERA and compositions for Steve Coogan's SAXONDALE.

Berry's Opium album, released in 2008, defies description; built loosely around the concept of what goes through the mind of a Hangman, it is rich in sound bytes from SNUFFBOX and has some memorable macabre boasts ("All things digested have a similar hue"). In contrast Witchazel is an enchanting psych-folk masterpiece, benefiting from a sound that is progressive without relying on the overblown pomposity that came to be associated with the sub-genre during the 70s. 2013's Kill the Wolf - taking its title from English folklore that demands a ritual wolf sacrifice for any "evil" communial happening - continues Witchazel's pastoral journey but with a more bleached-out palate. Equally evocative, the opening track 'Gather Up' is a mesmerising circular chant that draws the listener out of modern meltdown into the natural world; and the nine minute centrepiece 'Solstice' is an epic of Pink Floyd proportions, a two-part progression awash with guitar solos, clarinet and harpsichord.

Sporting a cover painted by Berry, Music For Insomniacs is a slow-building composition of calm.

Recorded during pre-dawn sessions at his London flat before Kill the Wolf, Berry's two-tiered, 45-minute electronic patchwork Music For Insomniacs was released on the 19th of May (in fact, the first movement ends with a programmed sequence that would go on to become Kill the Wolf’s 'October Sun.') Taking in his beloved Oldfield and anything from Brian Eno and Jean Michel Jarre to Aphex Twin, the album negates his recent prog-folk preferences to create an ambient piece that aims to "colour your dreams." Partly recorded during actual bouts of insomnia, the work patiently evolves with numerous synths, pianos, woodwinds and found-sounds which includes babies crying and a creaking door taking on the gravitas of some giant wooden hull. Such experimental self-indulgence may provide a jolt to devotees eager for the next Witchazel, but as Berry has stated on his website, "if the experiment is successful, you shouldn’t remember it."

The Old Familiar

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA (2013)
THE WORLD'S END (2013)

"I'm Siege Face"; at last, Norfolk's finest is brought to the big screen in the uproarious ALAN PATRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA. 

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA sees self-proclaimed broadcasting kingpin Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) working as a DJ in the mid-morning slot at North Norfolk Digital, together with Sidekick Simon (Tim Key). When the station is taken over by the Gordale media conglomerate and renamed Shape ("The Way You Want It To Be"), Alan finds himself defusing a violent siege set in motion by the firing of fellow North Norfolk DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney). Using the situation in an attempt to boost his own career, Partridge acts as mediator between Farrell and the police, with hostages caught in the crossfire. Written by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Steve Baynham and Rob and Neil Gibbons, ALPHA PAPA successfully takes Partridge's long-standing entertainment persona and fully injects it with a claustrophobic yet cinematic scale. Fans will love to see regulars like harassed PA Lynn Benfied (Felicity Montagu) and Michael the Geordie (Simon Greenall) well into the mix, and Coogan's portrayal of his most famous alter ego is totally at one with the environment.

The most painfully endearing character created by Iannucci and Chris Morris for radio's 'ON THE HOUR' - which morphed into the prophetic TV hit THE DAY TODAY - Partridge started as an inept sports reporter, a man able to grasp only the rudimentary aspects of communication. Coogan - a renowned comedic perfectionist - made Partridge a true great of British comedy, and his acute embarrassing situations, which included shooting a guest dead on his chat show KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU, set the scene for the next masterstroke of squirmedy, Ricky Gervais' David Brent. In fact, Partridge has been under siege all his life, a car-crash of an existence that has been undermined by terminal - but chirpy - interpersonal skills and a trademark 'sports casual' look. It is a career that has mirrored the rise of media and consequent decline in any real value; radio, TV, mockumentaries, webisodes and now film have all danced to his deflatory tune for over twenty years, illustrating a fluidity in format that has helped keep the character fresh.

The boys are back in town: old school friends aim to revive past glories in Edgar Wright's disappointing conclusion to the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, THE WORLD'S END. 

On the more abrasive comedy scale, THE WORLD'S END - Edgar Wright's completion of the loose trilogy started with SHAUN OF THE DEAD and continued with HOT FUZZ - tells of Gary King (Simon Pegg), who has always regretted failing to finish 'The Golden Mile' on his last day of school (a circuit of twelve pubs in his uneventful home town of Newton Haven). Obsessed with the idea that completing the task would make up for all his mistakes, he persuades his original 'Mile' mates - over two decades later - to abandon their respectable lives and recreate the crawl. Car salesman Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), estate agent Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), architect Steven Prince (Paddy Considine) and lawyer Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) are drawn into the venture, despite festering resentments towards Gary. When King has an altercation with a youth in the Gents who turns out to be a blue-blooded robot drone, it becomes apparent that the whole town - except for a few willing collaborators (including one played by Reece Shearsmith) – have been replaced by replicants under the control of aliens called The Network. These beings have guided recent technological advances for the human race and are determined to enforce conformity across the universe.

At a time when numbers of the quintessential British public house are ever diminishing, THE WORLD'S END takes the notion of the pub crawl and turns it into a quest of almost Arthurian nature. Although an entertaining romp, awash with the director's trademark editing frenzy, there is nothing new here despite cast and crew proclaiming how profound its message. Individuality is - quite literally - King, forced home by the use of Primal Scream's soundbyte from THE WILD ANGELS ("free to do what we want to do"). The climactic verbal melee between Gary, Andy and Steven with The Network ultimately ends with the aliens giving up trying to talk to the humans and telling them to "fuck it". By Gary convincing the aliens that mankind is not worth winning over - and in a flat coda Andy, in London ruins, explaining to children that the alien withdrawal led to an apocalypse - the film drowns in its aura of fractured relationships and failed opportunities. Whereas THE WORLD'S END ticks the boxes of its own making, ALPHA PAPA takes its own dysfunctional family and moulds a far more successful whole.

Houses of Horrible

BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH (1983)
DR TERRIBLE'S HOUSE OF HORRIBLE (2001)

"What in hell is going on at Headstone Manor?" One of the most baffling things about BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH is why Cleo Rocos doesn't take her clothes off.

BY 1983, Kenny Everett was one of the major stars of British television. Made to exploit this popularity, BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH is a brave failure that sees the zany comedian play Dr Lukas Mandeville - a former surgeon with an on-off German accent and a metal leg - the spearhead of a group of scientists sent to investigate the strange activity at Headstone Manor ("Businessman’s Weekend Retreat and Girls’ Summer Camp"). Unknown to them, their presence is about to incur the wrath of a local coven of bumbling but determined Satanists, led by a 700-year-old disciple known only as The Sinister Man (Vincent Price).

Written by Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer, the film flopped disastrously in Britain but was a box office hit down under; in an interview to promote the film on Australian television, Everett attributed its lack of home-ground success to the fact that the British "have no class." But the main reason was the suicidal decision of giving the film an 18 certificate, alienating Everett's young fans but simultaneously fully exploiting its tit humour and comedic gore; in a tour-de-force scene of excess, for example, Mandeville attempts to retrieve his monocle after it drops into his patient during a flashback surgery sequence.

The Countess (Ronni Ancona) bares her fangs in Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust, from DR TERRIBLE'S HOUSE OF HORRIBLE.

BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH is best viewed through a nostalgic haze; its all a juvenile mess, but an entertaining one, leading to a suitably perplexing climax. The cast is a checklist of familiar faces; the "distinguished international team of specialists" include Gareth Hunt and Don Warrington as the most bemused-looking gay couple in cinema history, Sheila Steafel as a butch lesbian, Pamela Stephenson, John Fortune, and Cleo Rocos, the latter redefining the meaning of non-actress. The film also revels in a lengthy list of movie parodies: Steafel in a school uniform (CARRIE), Stephenson being invisibly raped (THE ENTITY), a public house straight out of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and Everett writhing on the table like John Hurt in ALIEN, before finding relief in a prolonged belch. 

When Steve Coogan's DR TERRIBLE'S HOUSE OF HORRIBLE first aired on the BBC in the winter of 2001, critical and public reaction was muted. Fans expecting a comedy akin to Alan Patridge were instead confronted with six quality homages to 1960s and 70s British horror, brimming with in-jokes and notable guest stars. And Now the Fearing apes the Amicus anthology, Frenzy of Tongs takes us back to yellow peril potboilers, and Curse of the Blood of the Lizard of Doom parodies the scientific-experiment-gone-wrong sub-genre. Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust is a sumptuous ode to the 70s Hammer vampire canon, Voodoo Feet of Death takes on the body-part-transplant movie, and Scream Satan Scream! is firmly ensconced in Tigon territory. Unlike the buffoonery of BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH, there is a genuine love for the material being spoofed, which makes the series an incredibly affectionate viewing experience.

Spaced Out

SPACED (1999 - 2001)

HOT FUZZ (2007)

The excellent assemble cast of SPACED.

AN outstanding Channel 4 series with a huge cult following, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson’s SPACED was a new breed of situation comedy. The situation wasn’t new - experiences of a group of mismatched housemates (here played by Pegg, Stevenson and Mark Heap, with regulars Nick Frost, Katy Carmichael and Julia Deakin) - but it was memorable for director Edgar Wright’s innovative shooting techniques, which added extra depth and texture to the already rich scripts. Wright mixes the everyday with the extraordinary, achieving an impressive array of sight gags which reference streams of sci-fi and pop culture; the director doesn't just borrow from cinema, he aspires to the visual quality of a different medium.

SPACED’s characters have a complexity unusual in sitcoms, and are allowed to develop from miserly beginnings: Tim (Pegg) spends hours shooting zombies and drowning Lara Croft on his Playstation, Daisy (Stevenson) will organise anything (parties, performances, pets) rather than sit down and actually work, landlady Marsha (Deakin) hits the bottle, Mike (Frost) joins any organisation which allows him to wear army clothing, and artist Brian (Heap) hides in his basement, torturing himself with ideas which he can never fully capture on canvas. The show is often as touching as it is funny, and deeply sceptical about the things that twentysomethings are told to believe are the very essence of life: conceptual art, clubbing, responsibilities, and love. As Tim says in the final episode, "Hollywood endings are just a myth, life is just a thankless struggle."

“Here come the Fuzz”: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

A straight-faced spoof of everything from slasher movies to Agatha Christie and homoerotic U.S. buddy movies, Wright’s HOT FUZZ sees dedicated London cop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) compulsorily transferred to Sandford - a quiet Gloucestershire village - by his superiors to stop him from showing them up. The local cop shop is run by chummy Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), and Angel soon irritates everyone on his first night by arresting all the under-18s in the local pub (echoing DS Andy Cartwright (Rafe Spall)’s contemptuous put-down "If you want to be a big cop in a small town, fuck off up the model village") and hauling in for drunk driving a slob called Danny (Frost), who turns out to be Butterman's son and Angel's imminent partner. When a figure dressed as the Grim Reaper begins killing the villagers, Sandford becomes the unlikely stage for bullet ballets and screeching car chases, as Angel and Danny lay bare the truth.

As in SPACED and SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the on-screen chemistry between real-life best friends Pegg and Frost is effortless. It's refreshing to see Pegg in a more driven and stoic role, far away from his bumbling nice guy characters Tim Bisley and Shaun Riley. Frost is particularly good as the foil for Pegg's procedural prig; wannabe badass Danny may come across as a bumbling klutz - his size instantly giving him the standard jolly fat man vibe - but he is the face of honesty inside a distorted reality of mysterious deaths, countryside conspiracies and semi-erotic male bonding. The film is awash with star supporting turns and cameos - including Billie Whitelaw, Steve Coogan and Alice Lowe - but Timothy Dalton as Somerfield supermarket manager and pillar of the community Simon Skinner is particularly worthy of merit.

Decapitation, HOT FUZZ style.

With its provincial town hiding a dark secret from a newly arrived cop, there is more than an echo of 1973's THE WICKER MAN (as if to underline the parallel, that film's star, Edward Woodward, plays the head of the Neighbourhood Watch). To further the horror film foundation, there are underground catacombs filled with the skeletons and a number of stunning Argentoesque murders. Strangely, little if anything is done in any of these scenes to signal that they are a joke; they are presented exactly as they would be in a straight-out horror. Consequently, the results feel botched – as if a cop spoof had awkwardly mutated into a splatter film, with a big, violent finale to blur the lines between the two.

Ultimately HOT FUZZ seems disjointed, over-long, over-polished and missing an emotional core. Even SHAUN OF THE DEAD found time to give its titular hero a love life; in HOT FUZZ, Angel’s only romantic involvement is speaking to his CSI inspector ex-fiancée Janine early on (an uncredited Cate Blanchett), and Danny's private stash of action movies is a sad replacement for actual companionship. Janine wears her protective goggles and surgical mask throughout her single scene, and her anonymity is underscored by all the other generic females in the film. Ranging from the old and cranky to the busty trollop, the female triteness makes the weapon-worship even more interesting by comparison, the sight of an arsenal as pleasing as ogling a nice arse.