Jazz Odyssey Reveals The Secret Life of the Car Park
WORDS: Gareth E. Rees MUSIC: Simon&thePope with Gareth E. Rees FILM: Martin Fuller PHOTO: Jeff Pitcher ‘It is Morrisons that lights the fire of my obsession. Not the supermarket itself but the space outside: the car park.’ Car parks are
Absurdities and Synchronicities: A Postman’s View of the Everyday
WORDS: Gareth E. Rees reviewing Round About Town, by Kevin Boniface, Uniformbooks 2018 LOCATION: Huddersfield, West Yorkshire IMAGES: Kevin Boniface from Round About Town When I lived beside Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes, I was privileged to be a freelance writer who could
Object-Oriented Ontology: The Yorkshire Three
LOCATION: YORKSHIRE FILM: A616 This is rather weird and wonderful… The film duo Joshua Alexander and Erkembode, who featured on Unofficial Britain in 2015 with their Hackney Marsh films (watch them here) , are back with an “Object-Orientated Ontology” trilogy
Fieldgate Street
WORDS: Bobby Seal IMAGES: David Hoffman [© David Hoffman] Introduction: When I was a student in London in the 1970s I lived in a tenement block called Fieldgate Mansions in Whitechapel. The area was pretty run-down but had a fascinating history and
Wyrd & Riotous Calendars to Corrupt Your Poor Mind
WORDS: Gareth E Rees LOCATION: The Year This month I’ve come into possession of two strange, unconventional calendars that turn the year inside out and upside down. First up… Wyrd Kalendar Wyrd Kalendar is written by Chris Lambert, the man behind
Hastings’ 1919 U-Boat Wreck: Dark Omen, Harbinger of Chaos, Agent of Eris
WORDS: Gareth E Rees MUSIC: Wave Seer (Gareth E. Rees and James Weaver) In May 1919, the decommissioned U-boat 118 was on tow from France to be scrapped at Scapa Flow. But in a storm it broke loose and rolled
The Journey of a Memorial Bench, from Woodland Walk to Basement Techno
WORDS: Gareth E. Rees MUSIC: Fireflies ft Gareth E. Rees In 2014 I went on a long walk through Brede High Woods in East Sussex, where I stumbled upon a memorial bench to a man named Duncan Sharp, upon which
Sound of the Sea & Shabby Magick
CONCEPT/FILM: ZEROH. MUSIC: Fritz Catlin, Simon&ThePope WORDS: Michael Smith ZEROH hired drone company Drone On to record the walk along the front from St.Leonards to Hastings to accompany a commissioned piece by writer/ artist/ performer Michael Smith. ZEROH asked Michael
Haunted by a Nuclear Power Station
WORDS: Gareth E. Rees LOCATION: Hastings In 2013 I left London for good. It was traumatic. Fifteen years in that city, longer than any single place I’d lived for the forty years I’d been crawling over the earth’s surface. In
The Stone Tide – Psychedelic Visions at the World’s End
FILM: Martin Fuller ‘The Stone Tide’, a short film by Martin Fuller, follows Unofficial Britain’s founder Gareth E. Rees, author of The Stone Tide [Influx Press, 2018] as he walks through Hastings with his dog Hendrix. “Winter by winter, the
