Audio Drama Review – Vanishment

Episode: “Don’t Let Your Mind Wander” from Vanishment Productions

Written by Richard H. Brooks. Produced by Peter Beeston.

Cast: Sally Walker-Taylor, Owen McCuen, Karim C Kronfli, Bridget Lappin, Jonny Glasgow, Fiona Thraille

N.B. If you enjoy these reviews why not check out London After Midnight. (Or indeed, Doctor Who spin-off Children of the Circus, Cary On or Twilight Meridian.)

So, first things first, I must declare that I have had the privilege of working with a couple of the actors in this production, but they’re so good that it only reinforces why I wanted to.

Vanishment is, to the best of my understanding, an anthology series. According to their official Twitter account (I will not call it X and you can’t make me) the series will offer – “Mystery and adventure stories about the things that disappear. And the dangers of finding them.”

I mean, I knew I was in from that statement alone, fitting as it does so neatly with, in technical jargon, “stuff I tend to like”.

I was not wrong. The first story “Don’t Let Your Mind Wander” is an atmospheric, deeply emotional and wonderfully performed meditation on loss, grief and the nature of reality. I’m hesitant to spoil too much about it, but in brief, Cara (played by the always exquisite Sally Walker-Taylor) is on a mission into deep space, investigating the sort of phenomenon that tends to lead to weird shit going down.

In (often broken) communications with home, it becomes clear that Cara is having more than one conversation. Her memory of leaving Earth conflicts with that of those she’s left behind and the other person she claims to be talking to, is not and cannot be present.

There were occasional times where the set-up of why she was on the mission and the way that the mission is run felt more like plot mechanics than deep world-building but in a one-off story that can easily be forgiven when the characters and their arcs feel real. And they do. Walker-Taylor has a knack for presenting sentiment without sentimentality and Richard H Brooks’ elegant, lyrical script gives her plenty of opportunity for her to flex that skill. Cara’s predicament feels, if you’ll pardon the phrasing, universal and if you don’t have at least mildly watery eyes by the end, you are off my Christmas list.

I thoroughly recommend you check it out here. I can’t wait to hear the other stories.

Audio Drama Review – Hunted

Hunted from Eerie Earth

Written and Directed by Kieran Begg

Cast: Ric Oldroyd, Saxon Davids, Beth Eltringham, Andrea, Waite, Megan Chase

This review actually ties quite neatly into our current promotion of London After Midnight, as it illustrates some of the challenges (and opportunities) involved in adapting a film script into an audio drama. (Do check out London After Midnight and Twilight Meridian if you enjoy this review. Or even if you don’t. I’m not fussy.)

Because Hunted, set in 1987 and very much in the vein (indeed, veins) of slasher classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13^th and even more modern fare such as Wrong Turn, was once a film script gathering dust in writer/director Kieran Begg’s bottom drawer.

One of the things it gets very right in its transfer from a potential film to an actual audio is the tone. The films from which it draws inspiration have built and sustained their respective fanbases both by understanding their expectations and where appropriate subverting them. To Hunted’s credit, it does feel as though it might have been adapted from a lost, midnight matinee classic. It has the character dynamics, the feeling of inevitable doom and the occasional unwillingness of the protagonists to avoid the goddamn outdoors.

Kenny Jefferson is the good brother, the successful brother, the family. Matt is a stoner who, to his brother’s chagrin, hasn’t even slightly got his shit together. And so, because such is the way of these things, they decide to go camping, with Kenny’s wife and childhood friend Heather in tow.

As you will have successfully guessed, things do not go well.

I won’t spoil any of the plot specifics, but I will say that the cast never wink or nod at the audience. They play it straight and that maintains the atmosphere of dread far more successfully than a pastiche might. At the same time, there is nostalgia here, for the types of horror stories that, while they are certainly attempted in modern film, tend towards either the meta or mistake laziness for low budget.

It’s a tight, atmospheric listen. If I have a caveat, it’s that the dialogue can be a touch overwritten at times, particularly in the first few scenes as we establish the character dynamics. Conversely, the sound design is somewhat minimal in places. That being said, it’s only really distracting in the silences and then mildly. You can’t fault a production for working within its limitations, however, or we’d have no low budget horror films in the first place.

Check out Hunted here.  

Audio Drama Review – Homestead

Homestead from Not Another Podcast

Written, Directed & Produced by James Robinson

Cast: Travis Box, James Robinson, Summer Shore, Jeff Mitchell, Chris Williams, James Blind, Justin Mansfield, Brianne Robinson

N.B. London After Midnight and Twilight Meridian both need your support. If you like this review considering buying the former or donating to the other. Or both. I won’t stop you.

It used to be that the Apocalypse was something that restricted itself to fiction and/or religious texts (your view on the difference is between you and your God or lack thereof). But you would be forgiven, given world events over the last few years, for wondering if it weren’t trying to make a sideways move into reality.

So it’s again not surprising that we have seen a fresh explosion of post-Apocalyptic TV shows, films, books and audio dramas (see what I did there?) that take place in a world decimated by something or the other. Plague seems to be popular in the 2020s. I can’t imagine why.

Which brings us to Homestead, an excellent audio drama that has been running for the last few years, courtest of Not A Podcast Productions.

Dystopian worlds are nothing new in fiction, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Neither are romances, or superheroes or parental conflicts or war. There are concepts to which we are attracted as audiences, because they tap into universal human feelings, desires or fears.

The reason why Homestead works as well as it does is because its writer (and director) James Robinson understands the single most important thing about this kind of story: it lives or dies on the strength of its characters and, by extension, the performances that bring them to life.

Yes, there is tense stuff in Homestead, from the very first episode. But we also take time getting to know the characters. They talk to each other about things. About themselves. In a natural way. There is room for humour, for levity, for life.

The performers take advantage of this and build a natural chemistry between themselves that draws us in and makes everything that happens to and around them mean more.

I listened to the first few episodes of Homestead before sitting down to write and it only gets better and tighter as it goes, so I’ll be carrying on my journey to the end of season 1 and beyond.

Go and listen for yourself here.

Audio Drama Review – The Petrified Forest

The Petrified Forest

Written by Robert E. Sherwood

Produced & Directed by Pete Lutz

Cast: Darren Rockhold, Les Marsden, Gino C. Vianelli, Bobby Vela, Paul Arbisi, Carole Krohn, Ebony Rose, Chuck Wilson, Stephanie Stearns Dulli, David Ian, Dana Gonsalves, Duane Noch, Tre’ Minor, Frank Guglielmelli, Pete Lutz

N.B. If you enjoy these reviews – in addition to checking out the awesome work featured, why not have a look at London After Midnight, starring Art Malik or Wrong Dimension’s Twilight Meridian?

Everyone who makes audio fiction, of any description, know how much of a debt we owe the long, rich history of radio drama of the past. In the UK, perhaps, we might summon the decades of BBC radio plays. In the US, the countless number of plays and films performed for radio, often featuring their original casts. Radio was a living medium and, often, a way for a wider audience to experience works to which they had not had access in the theatre or even wanted to revisit after a cinema viewing.

The Petrified Forest is a two-act play by Robert E. Sherwood, which ran on the Broadway stage in 1935 and was adapted to film the following year. Both of these productions, along with the later 1955 television adaptation, featured the legendary Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee.

There was also, and here is where the wireless comes into play, a 1953 radio adaptation, produced by NBC under their strand “Best Plays”. And it is this version that Pete Lutz and the Narada Radio Company have lovingly recreated.

The play itself is excellent, more than earning its multiple adaptations, taking place in Depression-era Arizona amongst the denizens of the Black Mesa B-B-Q and Filling Station – drifters, war brides, relics of the Old West, employees and customers. All caught up in a set of fateful events.

This diverse cast of characters are wonderfully inhabited by the members of Narada, including Dana Gonsalves in the desperate gangster role once taken by Bogey.

What struck me most about this adaptation, aside from its quality, is that it not only stands on its own feet as a fine adaptation of a classic play, but also manages to replicate the feel of 20th century radio drama, naturally and without pastiche. It’s somehow embedded in the sound design, the recording and the performances. It has that attention to detail that only comes from a deep love for both the material and the medium.

It’s an absorbing take on a fascinating play and I highly recommend you listen to it here.

Audio Comedy Review – The Temp

The Temp

“Lost & Alone”, “Lost in Space”

Written by Michael Wilhelm & Directed by Lauren Nichols

Cast: Michael Wilhelm, Lorraine Knox, Josette Wilhelm, Larry Bower, et al.

As a writer whose roots and, indeed, highlights are in comedy, it’s always a joy to be asked to review something FUNNY. Especially as I am currently promoting two shows – London After Midnight and Twilight Meridian – that veer more to spooky than kooky. That’s just how the career crumbles. (And there are still gags in both. I can’t help myself.)

However, I’ll admit, coming in cold, I wasn’t sure what to make of The Temp at first. Or, more correctly, it took me a minute to tune in to the vibe it was going for. The Temp revolves around the adventures of Bernie Pfelger, the titular temporary worker, bouncing from odd job to odder job, episode to episode. A great set-up for a comedy, in terms of the scope offered and a potentially challenging one for a sitcom writer as it reduces the number of familiar elements per episode with which to hook regular listeners.

The other thing that sets The Temp apart from many of its audio siblings is that it is recorded live in front of an audience. This works very much to the show’s advantage and it is what clued me into the best way to listen.

The Temp is, at his heart, a thoroughly charming throwback to the radio sitcoms of old. Performed live, it isn’t as polished or immersive as a lot of audio fiction, but what it loses there, it gains the air of eventhood and the warmth of a communal experience.

Over the two episodes I listened to, scrapes were gotten into and out of, there were some surreal flights of fancy and Bernie proved to be an intriguing central character. It made me go back to listen to an earlier episode, so job done there.

I don’t feel it always hit the breakneck pace on which this kind of comedy thrives (to my ear, other opinions are available) and the writing could be tightened to take better advantage of the game cast, but I enjoyed my time with The Temp.

Listen here.

Audio Drama Review – Haunted: The Town On the Edge of Hell

Haunted from Impala Films

Season 2, Episode 1 – “The Town on the Edge of Hell”

Written by Jamie Evans

Produced and Directed by Jamie Evans and Benton Hodges

Cast: Jamie Evans, Isabelle Barbieri and Luke Hunter

This is the next in my series of audio drama reviews, undertaken to offset the rigours of promoting London After Midnight and Twilight Meridian, amongst others. Basically, I need to talk about other people’s work to balance out SO much talking about my own.

Anyway, onto Haunted. It’s a series new to me – which I like – because it means that I can now go back and wallow in all of Season One. And, on the strength of the Season Two opener, I very much want to. In short, it’s impossible to dislike a show where a vampire is attacked with garlic dip. In fact, if anyone is collecting quotes from me to publish posthumously, I’d like them to open with that one. It’s a rule to live by.

Haunted shares DNA with series such as The X-Files and Doctor Who in that it melds genuine creepiness with a sense of fun and humour that crawls across all the brows, from low to high. But it is very much its own animal, transforming archetypes like the hard-drinking investigator into real characters that you can root for. It helps that the cast are clearly having a ball.

In Season 2’s opener, our central trio of James, Abigail and Dan are investigating a homeless shelter that seems to be doing a little too well in terms of reducing the number of people sleeping on the street. But that – garlic dip duly employed – is only the beginning of the newest case. Before episode one’s end, Abigail will have mysteriously disappeared only to find herself welcomed to… hell?

I don’t really want to say more than that – it’s the kind of story (and I suspect this may be true of the series overall) that rewards going in with little or no foreknowledge. But I can say that even jumping in at Season 2, the characters’ relationships are so well-drawn that I didn’t feel lost for a moment. There’s an air of layers waiting to be unpeeled, but the story also moves at a pleasingly snappy pace.

I jumped to episode 2 the moment the credits finished, which I hope says it all.

Recommended for those who like a little levity mixed in with their scary. Both work equally well.

Listen here and support Impala Films here.

Audio Drama Review – “The Easthaven Eight”

“The Easthaven Eight” – from Scyther Podcast Audio Dramas.

Chapter One: Aftermath

Written by Karl Dutton, based on a story and characters by Karl Dutton & Nate Lodbrok

Cast: Ryan Tibbitts, Zach Adamson, Sarah Nightingale, Alpheus Deverill, Nate Lodbrok, Rebecca Olivia, John M. Dyess, Jeannie McGinnis, Ray O’Hare, Omri Rose, Natalie Beran, Katherine Black, Chavelli Gutierrez, Amelia Oliver, Harry Dyer

This is the first of what I hope will be many reviews of the plethora of brilliant audio dramas out there, as we continue the promotional tour for London After Midnight, our adaptation of the lost Lon Chaney silent film, now starring Art Malik (not to mention crowdfunding for the first series of Twilight Meridian and a couple of other shows of which I’m very proud coming down the pipeline.)

It struck me that if I was going to be out in the world PROMOTING audio drama, I should spend some time also promoting other shows. Making things is challenging enough, but getting eyeballs or eardrums on them can be soul-crushingly hard. So consider this my attempt to be part of the solution or, at least, not part of the problem.

But on to our first review. The Easthaven Eight comes from Scyther Podcast Audio Dramas, perhaps best know for their X-Men and Power Rangers series, the dynamics of which certainly have an impact on their first original piece. In many ways, Easthaven is a thematic sibling, at very least, to every story in which a mysterious event changes forever the lives of ordinary folk (that’s me doing my damnedest to remain spoiler-free).

What sets this – judging from the first episode – apart is the confidence with which the story is told and the work of the uniformly excellent cast. For instance, I am not usually a fan of narration in audio drama. I tend to prefer a story to either get round any necessary visual cues in dialogue or to trust the audience to work it out for themselves. Yet here it didn’t bother me, because the characters were strong enough that spending time in their interior monologues was welcome. I might have preferred a single narrator – the changing POVs threatened to become unwieldy towards the end – but the cast carried them all off with aplomb.

It also shows great restraint in its pacing, allowing us most of the first episode to get to know our central characters and their relationships (or lack thereof) before hitting us with, first, the true effects of the mysterious explosion which they all survived and b) the cliffhanger realisation of something even more horrific to come.

Finally, Easthaven is pleasingly LGBTQI+ friendly show that seems to have a genuine desire to allow everyone a place at the table and it will interesting to see how successfully it manages the inner lives of the characters in a three-dimensional way, rather than as archetypes, moving forward.

In short, I’m intrigued and anxious to discover what happens next. I think you will be too.

Listen to The Easthaven Eight here or here or, indeed, here. In fact, wherever you find your podcasts.

And you can support Scyther’s work here.

Canadian Album of the Day – Northern Pikes – Snow in June

Released 1990

I am 46 years old. Which means that alongside the usual aches and pains of encroaching decriptitude, I am increasingly prone to a number of ailments that wouldn’t have troubled my younger self.

Heart disease. Type 2 Diabetes.

Nostalgia.

In all honesty, that last one has been lurking for a while. I’m a melancholic bipolar musician with a bad childhood – the past does pay the occasional visit. And when I’m depressed, I do have a playlist of songs from my teenaged years to which I turn, the better to weep for the lost. Many of them the songs that made me want to be a songwriter in the first place.

You only have to listen to my music to realise that the UK, my adopted home, has, of course, played a part in my development. Especially the Artist Legally Known as Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus. (Elvis Costello, for the non-music-nerds.)

But I am a Canadian and my formative years were spent listening to Canadian radio. Which means there are touchstone albums for me that I’m sure my peers back home will recognise immediately, but which cause my friends, family and musical collaborators over here to say “Who now?”

So I thought, now that I’m back in the musical sphere, and bored stiff with talking about myself, I might introduce you to some records that you may or may not know, all by Canadian artists and many of which form the cornerstones of whatever the hell kind of songwriter I turned out to be.

I’d also like to consider the question: What is CANADIAN music? Is it simply a geographical thing? Or is there something in the water that hydrates our respective muses in a particular way?

I like to think of myself as a Canadian musician, but I’ve made all of my professional records in the UK – with largely British collaborators. I am, however, pretty damned sure I am a Canadian songwriter. Maybe by the time I finish this series, I’ll know why that is.

The first record I’ve chosen because until last night, I had entirely forgotten about it. I was building a writing playlist (a big part of every scribe’s day) and decided to Canuck it up a bit. So, I scrolled down to the related artists for my beloved T. Hip, esq and saw the name “Northern Pikes”.

Then I saw the cover for “Snow in June” – their third album. And suddenly I was back in a metallic blue Datsun Sunny, parked on a beach, looking at the ocean, a well-worn cassette (like a CD, but rectangular and, for some reason, often sticky) in the deck.

I put the album on and was staggered to find I remembered every note, every lyric. It was like being introduced to a stranger and suddenly remembering you were once married.

I dipped further back into their catalogue and discovered the same thing. I knew a LOT of Northern Pikes songs. And loved almost as many. Weird. But Snow in June kept pulling me back, the way records you once memorised tend to do.

She Ain’t Pretty was one of the big singles, the sort of light-hearted barroom rock ‘n’ roll for which I have a weakness, but which often makes my punkier peers throw things at my head. There is a vein of humour in Canadian rock that I think gets mistaken for novelty elsewhere. Note that one down for the inevitable quiz.

Kiss Me You Fool, I think, suggests the overall tone of the record more accurately. All jangly folk-rock with accordions and harmonica aplenty. I’m a sucker for jangle. Plus, it came out when I was 14, so I know for a fact it would have jabbed at my intense desire for love, (and the other thing, of course, I WAS 14) like a pointy stick. At 46, with too many losses under my belt, it does something else to me.

It’s not an aggressive record, Snow in June, though there are moments of darkness, even shades of politics. The Pikes (at that time, Jay Semko, Bryan Potvin, Mel Bryck & Don Schmid) have harder-edged songs elsewhere, but this plows a subtler furrow. What it is, above all else, is a fine songwriting record with its own distinct identity, played by a tight little Canadian band.

From Saskatoon. 4 1/2 hours drive from Estevan, where I was born. I’m not saying that gets them extra points, but it does.

Idiopath – Side 1, Track 4 – Whatever This Is

“I’m certain that this isn’t love, although it shares its sadness and its shame. Between craving and hunger, I’m not crying, but I’m drawn towards the rain.“

Whatever This Is

Lyrics by Kenton Hall

Music by Kenton Hall, Mark Haynes, John McCourt and Brett Richardson

Listen here

Pre-order Ltd. Edition CD boxset or digital here.

Pre-order Ltd. Edition Vinyl here.

There are certain songs about which you remember nothing. Especially if, like me, you used to drink. Often I would wake with half a piece of breakfast toast attached, butter side down, to my forehead and a handful of difficult to decipher lyrics scribbled on a beer mat that, alarmingly, seemed to be from Spain. And I was not in Spain.

Other songs you remember exactly where you were when you wrote them. Whatever This Is predates a lot of songs on the record, but in a lot of ways it’s the prequel to the primary story contained within. I was walking through a field, at a music festival, trying to pull together the lyrics about another fine mess I’d gotten myself into, something about which I only knew one thing… it wasn’t that tumultous emotion I’d come to know as love.

Irony of ironies, I walked through the field with someone who, from the klaxon bells going off in my heart, I was falling in love with. Which promised complications all of its own.

Like I said, a prequel.

I ended up recording it with a line-up consisting of members of my old band ist. In fact, it sounds very ist, compared to some of the album. Which is fine. We were a good band. Although, I’d never have dared play as much piano on an ist track proper. This is me doing my best Steve Nieve impression, without the benefit of his experience, talent or ability to actually play the piano. More on Steve in a later post.

Lyrically, this is one of those songs with which I was playing with the language a lot, for my own amusement. That’s my default setting and I still love doing it, although for some of the more direct songs on Idiopath, I tried to simplify my verbal gymnastics, occasionally successfully, so as not to overly obscure the emotions. But I will never not swoon over an internal rhyme or a slippery chain of alliteration.

So here’s to this. Whatever this is.

***

The Omniopath version of this song comes from the other pianist I try to emulated, Mr Paul Swannell and will be premiered some time next week. Back in the so-called day, Paul was in a band called Mazeppa. Mazeppa and ist used to make the tour rounds together and became fast friends. We respected each other’s work and seemed to share a sense of humour.

Paul ended up contributing to both King Martha and Toothpick Bridge on piano and violin and was always a pleasure to have in the studio or the refitted post office van in which we used to tour. He’s one of us, basically. And we hated everybody.

He also makes a guest appearance on Idiopath on the song Going Too Far.

Idiopath – Side 1, Track 3 – “Mediocre Mile”

“Frank’s father told him whisky would make him manly – would put hair on his chest. So he dates a lot of barmaids and his torso looks just like a sweater vest.”

Mediocre Mile

Lyrics by Kenton Hall

Music by Kenton Hall & Brett Richardson

Idiopath Version: Listen now

Omnipath Version (Alan Jenkins & The Kettering Vampires): Listen now

Pre-order Idiopath now

I grew up in a small town. Well, a small city, to be more accurate. Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada. In Saskatchewan, you need at least 5,000 people to be a city. When I was born, in *mumbles*, there were 9,000ish in Estevan. In 2021, 10,000ish.

I lived in a cross between Little House on the Prairie and a Bruce Springsteen song.

Mediocre Mile starts there, or somewhere very like it. It’s a story of drifters, of disenchanted wait staff and fleeting romance.

Only it’s set in the real world. Or my version of it – I admit your mileage may vary. No sweeping getways in fuel-guzzling automobiles. It ‘wasn’t a romance for the ages. The sex was hardly worth the sweat.‘

It has existed in a great many versions over the 10 or so years since I wrote it. But it has always come back to being a country song played in a not-very-country-way. I love it very much. It contains some of the lyrics of which I’m most proud, especially as, in the context of Idiopath, it departs from the album’s primary narrative, but, nonetheless, shares its overall concerns. The many ways in which people excite and disappoint each other. The ludicrous way in which hearts behave.

Frank and Hannah, I salute you. I am you.

***

Omnipath version.

It’s hard to know where to start with our Mediocre Mile cover artist, Alan Jenkins. He was behind the desk for the very first ist EP, The Adult Tree, for numerous demo sessions AND for our album King Martha. Those personal connections, however, are but the tip of the iceberg. One of the most eclectic, eccentric and electric artists in the world, he has traded as or been a member of The Deep Freeze Mice, The Thurston Lava Tube, The Chrysanthemums, The Creams and, as here, Alan Jenkins & The Kettering Vampires. And that’s not to mention the amazing stuff he’s issued sans moniker and, no doubt, a thousand other variations I’ve forgotten.

I’d be a fan for his song titles alone. The Tuesday Cat Club. No Periscope will Help you Drive your Car. As If We Were Eating Bagels. Duet for Guitar and Toy Animal. I mean, you can’t NOT like that.

Thankfully, the music is just as intriguing, alarming and weird.

I first asked Alan if he would mind providing a vocal part for the song “Careful How You Go”, which he did, icing the cake with the bonus of a perfect organ part.

When he agreed to cover “Mediocre Mile” I was delighted.

When he sent me his version, I laughed for a week. In the best possible way. For starters, it was as groovy (said, obviously, in the style of Bruce Campbell) as I’d hoped.

It was also in Italian. Which I was not expecting, but somehow made perfect sense.

Franklin e Hannah, in stile continentale.

Alan’s version is called La Viale Dei Perduti. Which translates as “The Avenue of the Lost”. Please, someone make that movie. In black & white, on 16mm film.

Listen now