Tuesday, February 23, 2010

On one of our visits to London in the last couple of years, we stayed at a hotel in Shepherd's Bush. Walking along the West side of the Green I was surprised and oddly delighted to pass a building called Threshold House. Here's a picture of the building at 65-69 Shepherds Bush Green. This must surely be where Coil got the name of their label from, right? There's hardly any information to be found about the building on the web, but it was leased for a time by the BBC (the big television centre is just up the road) and apparently was where the Doctor Who production office was located for some years. Here I found some tantalising references to Doctor Who writers trooping down to Threshold House for meetings during the Eighties. Apparently there's an organisation called Threshold in the Doctor Who comic strips... And what's this about the Arkheon Threshold and the Planet of Ghosts? "The time rift created spectral visions". Now Coil did a record titled Time Machines, didn't they... Sounds a bit Tardis-y. Must all tie up, this, in some way, surely. But hmmm, I don't see anything out there suggesting Peter and Jhonn were Who nuts (probably too corny for them, insufficiently esoteric) or even particularly into the Radiophonic Workshop (despite their interest in early synthesisers, as with the Soviet Ans).

What actually reminded me of passing Threshold House was stumbling on this 1971 Jarman short over at Ubu Web.

Journey to avebury
Uploaded by zohilof. - Discover more animation and arts videos.
Took me a few minutes to realise who was responsible for the uncredited soundtrack (which was made in the 90s and added on retroactively) mainly cos it's not that characteristic (wish more of their stuff was in this vein really). The combination of Schulze/Schnitzler type analog amorphousness with the standing stones made me flash on the cover of Belbury Poly's From An Ancient Star and some of the more kosmische / electro-pastoral tracks on it.