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 Savoy Records
Lord Horror

Read by PJ Proby


1999

Savoy Talking Book

CD SA 3

CD

Lord Horror CD

  1 On the Isle of Lord Horror
16.30 (Britton)

2 Lord Horror: Jewkiller
12.03 (Britton)

3 (Lord) Horror on the Moon
42.35 (Britton)

Total time: 71.10

Vocals recorded at The Cutting Rooms, Manchester.

Strings, effects, mixing and production at Clocktower Studios, Manchester.

Mastered at Porky's, London.

String ensemble performance by members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

String pieces written and arranged by Stephen Boyce-Buckley.

Samples and production advice by John Coulthart.

Production by Britton/Butterworth.

Deluxe digipak packaging with 12-page colour booklet featuring Kris Guidio's original Lord Horror illustrations.


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Booklet texts:

"I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery."

Pirandello

"This world, this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who can only continue to exist by devouring each other; in which every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man."

Schopenhauer

"I can recall Degas, who was as black as serpent oil, standing with a glass of absinthe as green as parrot feathers. He was balanced precariously on a chair, holding his glass high. 'Drink, and choke the parrot!' he kept repeating, in a dry giggle. 'He's a sly dog!' he used to say, pointing to Manet."

"The worth of a book can be judged by the strength of the punches it gives and the length of time it takes to recover from them."

Flaubert

 


 
Lord Horror disc
Five years in the making!

Lord Horror, read by PJ Proby, constitutes the only English language text now available of the suppressed novel, Lord Horror, by David Britton—a book that "...outrages current taboos on racism so strangulating that no one may transgress them." (Elizabeth Young, The New Statesman).

Extracts read from the novel on this CD include the infamous 'Frogmen' episode where the Lord eats a Times Square bondage-freak whole. The opening passages of the book parodying George Orwell's Burmese Days are read by Mr Proby in a Walter Winchell-inspired tone. The narrative recounts Lord Horror surveying his tropical post-war hideout as he meditates nostalgically on his past glory days with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

The eclectic accompaniment of baroque strings (played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra), isolationist samples, blues guitar and pounding drums, turns the reading into a satirical broadcast from Hell. As John Coulthart says in his recounting of the disc's recording (Germany Calling), even the best of the William Burroughs readings (Dead City Radio, Seven Souls) don't travel this far in pushing the envelope of expectations for what a spoken word recording can achieve.

For more on the Lord Horror novel, see the Lord Horror page in the Books section. The novel's trials and tribulations are examined in detail in our History section.


 

Reviews

"Those of us who enjoy our sweets will occasionally feel the need for something which packs a heftier kick. In terms of heftiness, David Britton's Lord Horror has few rivals... As intoxicants go, this is bathtub gin toughened up with a strong dose of absolute alcohol—never mind the bouquet, just try to stop your head falling off—and if your payoff is in the hangover, you'll really love this one. It belongs right up there on the top shelf with all the other great works of combatively offensive literature which you should not like your wives and servants to read."

BRIAN STABLEFORD

“Lord Horror is a genuine work of imagination... The author has tried to shock by wielding his pen like an ice-pick.”

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON QC (The Guardian, defending Lord Horror in the Crown Court)

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