In this episode, Anikó and Steve discuss John Carpenter, Mad Max, Heavy Metal, comics, horror, gore, science fiction and audio cassettes with writer Mike Sizemore.
"Mike Sizemore is an award-winning writer and producer known for Slingers, hailed as 'the best tv show never made', his web series Caper and the critically-acclaimed London stage adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle. He has also written the two-volume science-fiction horror graphic novel Vortex and many other comic book titles.
This week, Steve contributed an article to a new magazine dedicated to British horror with an article about composer Elisabeth Lutyens’ scores for classic horror movies of the 1960s.
“If you have seen Amicus’ Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), The Skull (1965) and The Psychopath (1966), Hammer’s Paranoiac (1963) or Pennea’s Theatre of Death (1967), you can’t help but have noticed the wonderful, yet disturbing music.”
One of the very best things about working all day in my own studio is that I get to keep my miniature schnauzer Penny with me all day. She’s such a great dog and friend that I never don’t want her around. I’ve even taken her to multiple recording sessions at other peoples studios. People usually like having a dog around, as it can often diffuse any tensions that my arise. If you want to see photographs of Penny at these sessions, you can find them on my Instagram.
Earlier in the week, I snapped this picture of her patiently waiting in the dark under my studio desk.
I love radio.
Like '50s sci-fi, The Beatles, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Quatermass, John Wyndham and Doctor Who, it's something I got into because of my dad. As a kid he would regale me with his reenactments of Journey into Space, as well as some other scary drama about skiers trapped in a cabin by an avalanche while an octopus-like space monster tried to eat them, which I’m pretty sure is an adaptation of The Trollenberg Terror. With these tales in mind, I used to await the Radio Times at Christmas (the only time of year when we felt sufficiently frivolous) to find out what dramas were going to be on Radio 4. I remember one year taping the Radio 4 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon and listening to it on my own at the far side of the room with headphones on while the rest of the family watched Christmassy stuff on telly.
I have always been a huge Doctor Who fan, but as a child my fandom was bordering on religiosity. I would never dream of missing an episode and luckily my understanding parents always made sure I never did. Maybe I haven't changed now with regards to Nu-Who, but have just become a bit more laid back about it because I know I'll always be able to catch up with it on iPlayer.
I grew up in a household that listened to a lot of music , either on the radio or on the my dad's 8-track cassette player. One my earliest memories of music is being enchanted by Cat Steven's Lady D'Arbanville, which I remember at the time thinking was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. By the time I had gone to primary school, I had absorbed my parents taste in music by The Beatles, Elton John, The Kinks, The Monkees etc. The first album I ever bought for myself was Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the second was a compilation entitled A Collection of Beatles Oldies. By the time I was seven or eight I had added their more recent acquisitions, such as Ian Dury and the Blockheads and The Stranglers to my own personal taste.
Composer and producer Steve Kilpatrick has opened a new studio in Manchester.
Kilpatrick has created music that has been played globally on the likes of the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, MTV, and VH-1, as well as compositions for the Resident Evil 6 and Raccoon City trailers. He was also involved with award-winning BBC Radio 4 dramas Amazing Grace and Cottonopolis, and composed pieces for the feature film A Coven of Evil.
The music theatre version of The Night Bride was composed for a concert in a hall fitted with a quadrophonic sound system in Vienna in 2012. The piece was to be composed for soprano and narrator, to be performed by Anikó Tóth, and cimbalom, performed by Tim Williams of Psappha. The rest of the composition would be quadrophonic electronic music created from field recordings, as well as Anikó Tóth's voice.
The Night Bride started life as a short story I wrote that was published in New Writings in the Fantastic in 2007 and later became a music theatre piece which I composed to a libretto by Mike Sizemore. The piece received its premiere in Vienna in 2012 for soprano, cimbalom and quadrophonic tape.
What was a little unusual about this adaptation was the fact that there was an unpublished interim adaptation of the piece which informed the 2012 musical version.
Before writing the libretto, Mike wrote a comic book adaptation which was beautifully illustrated by David Kennedy. Here is that version.
Way back, I composed and recorded the music for a new BBC Radio 4 drama called Amazing Grace. The drama was broadcast in five parts throughout the week beginning 28th June on Woman's Hour in 2010. The drama was written by Michelle Lipton - and was directed by Justine Potter. The lead character, Grace, was played by Wunmi Mosaku and opposite her was Mrs. Bucket herself, Patricia Routledge.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, here's a brief synopsis:
After attending the performance of Strike! and the premiere of Residue at the International Computer Music Conference in New York in 2019, I went directly to a composer's residency in Visby on the island of Gotland, Sweden.
This residency was for three weeks and would be the first time in my entire life that I would have such a long time concentrated entirely on music. While that was certainly wonderful, I did find myself going a bit nuts at times.
As a composer, 2009 to 2019 has been a pretty good decade for me, and I thought it might be fun to document the most prominent events. I had a real drive in getting more overseas performances, and I began to transition from more abstract electronic compositions into more music for acoustic instruments.
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