Pulled this from a face book notification – alas I can’t recall who actually put this up – but whoever you are – thanks, for sitting in the hospital this afternoon in the waiting to get called this made us forget the dread unease and cheered me up no end. I actually forgot all about this, the vague memories flooding back as though on fast forward. This was from a time when Channel 4 was the cutting edge of British Television as had been BBC2 nearly 20 years earlier. Part of a short season of viewing spaces given up to four bands (the others being the Bunnymen, New Order and Virginia Astley), each an hour long – transmission wise, for them to do as they pleased in telling their story. As you’d imagine the Banshees provided the most trippy and surreal of the quartet, particularly love them Severin tale – very Burroughs meets Chandler, as to the rest think upon it as a doped out Alice (in weirdland)reappraised by Derek Jarman, dark, demented and at times quite disturbing but nevertheless quite creative, amusing and compared to the others making up the ‘play at home’ season – very out there and eccentrically British. The mosaic features the Glove and Creatures as well as live footage from the Banshees which includes key note performances of the schizophrenic ‘eve white, eve black’ and the psychotic ‘voodoo dolly’.
the sunday experience 