Read by PJ Proby

1999

Savoy Talking Book

CD SA 3

CD

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.

"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."

"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."

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.

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