There is a quiet virtue in the act of overthinking. It’s a form of deep and devotional attention. It’s a refusal to accept the surface level, the insistence on excavating the layers of meaning that lie beneath a simple gesture or a casual phrase.

To overthink is to treat a mundane moment as if it were a sacred, worthy of microscopic interpretation. To build entire cathedrals of possibility from a single misplaced comma in a text message. To understand that a brief, awkward silence is not an absence, but a space so dense with potential that it is almost deafening.

The world encourages us to skim, to scroll, to consume without tasting. The over-thinker is a completist. They demand the footnotes, the appendices, the un-redacted director's cut of every single human interaction. It is an exhausting and often painful way to live, yes. But it is also a declaration of a certain kind of faith and a belief that even the smallest, most insignificant moments contain enough complexity and wonder to be worthy of our full, undivided, and slightly neurotic, attention.

Welcome to the latest edition of Science & Magic. This issue is a testament to that particular faith. We have a ten-question expedition into the mind of songwriter Tim Keegan, whose own life is a dialogue between the records he absorbs and the rooms he inhabits. Jeff Young returns to a derelict Liverpool pub, documenting its afterlife and the shadow men who still haunt its corners. We present a feature-length conversation with former Violette starlet James Leesley of Studio Electrophonique, a masterclass in finding the monumental in the mundane.

Meanwhile, Nik Kavanagh offers a meticulously curated list of his ten favourite opening lines in music history. Rob Schofield takes us back to a 1996 FA Cup Final, where post-match gloom dissolves into the chaotic ecstasy of a night at Cream. Ange Woolf corresponds with her shadow self, and Eimear Kavanagh questions the very nature of when an artwork is "finished." Finally, Maya Chen continues her vital lexicography of Gen Alpha slang, this week dissecting the word "sus," the native tongue of the paranoid survivor.

Welcome to the archive of things that don't quite fit. We hope you get beautifully, irretrievably lost in here.

Matt

Ten Questions

with Tim Keegan

Tim Keegan's musical journey reads like a secret history of British independent music. As the principal songwriter and vocalist for the critically acclaimed Departure Lounge, he crafted a series of albums - from Out of Here to Too Late to Die Young - that earned comparisons to the likes of The Go-Betweens and Lloyd Cole for their flawless songwriting and quiet, intelligent optimism.

After a hiatus spent on solo records and collaborations with artists like Robyn Hitchcock, the band reunited, eventually finding a home here at Violette Records for their 2021 album, Transmeridian. Tim’s work has always been a dialogue between the records he absorbs, the places he inhabits and the friends, family and fellow musicians who populate his world.

We invited Tim to answer ten questions. His responses offer a glimpse into a world where The Kinks provide a tether to home, a Brazilian bossanova album quite rightly becomes an education and a Meat Loaf epic serves as a pre-gig ritual. These are his liner notes to a life well-lived, every song a footnote to a memory.

● What music makes you feel at home when you’re not?

The Kinks. I went to live in Nashville in January 2001 to start the new millennium with a clean slate but, as ever (and as Uncle Bob once put it), the past was close behind. As a way to make new friends, I set up a residency in a new bar in East Nashville called The Slow Bar.

We had a night every two weeks with two of my Departure Lounge bandmates, Lindsay and Jake and me forming the core house band, inviting anyone who fancied it to jump up and join us for a few songs or the whole night or whatever. We played our own songs alongside quite a wide variety of covers, from ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ (The Carpenters) to ‘Lost in Music’ (Sister Sledge) to ‘Macho Man’ (The Village People) to ‘They Don’t Know’ (Kirsty MacColl). The one that always got me though, was ‘Village Green’ by The Kinks. Here I was, far from home in the world songwriting capital, Music City USA, singing Ray Davies’ funny, poignant story about Daisy and Tom the grocer boy and going back to the old oak tree on the village green back in dear old Blighty, just like the one my sister and I used to pick conkers from with our dad in Essex in the seventies.

Like many of us, I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the country I’m from. Especially at this particular horrible moment. I’ve always enjoyed being away from Perfidious Albion with its charming superiority complex, moronic worship of the rich and powerful and in-bred systemic racism. The songs of The Kinks represent everything that’s bright and good about Englishness - the exact opposite of Oasis.

Last month I played with some friends at a party in rural France. We wanted to do a few covers all together at the end and I suggested ‘Well Respected Man’. Safe to say it brought the house down. Gotta love the Kinks.

● What album would you press into the hands of an 18-year-old today, insisting they listen to it front-to-back right now?

That’s a very timely question, since we just dropped our 19 year-old at university. He’s starting to get interested in jazz, about which I am mostly completely ignorant (although I do have a photo of my mum meeting Humphrey Littleton in the early sixties - does that count?). So I played him Getz/Giberto by Stan Getz and João Gilberto. Brazilian ‘Cool Jazz’ is my favourite. I like the slinky, mellow grooves, the smooth, exotic vocals and the sound of the nylon-string guitar playing those out-of-town chords. It’s mysterious and exotic and sexy.

Although the young folks now tend to listen to individual tracks, I have instructed my eldest to listen to, as nature intended, to these three albums I first heard when I was around his age: Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake, Boat To Bolivia - Martin Stephenson and the Daintees, Idlewild - Everything But The Girl. I love them all still and there's not a duff track on any of them.

● What’s the last album or song that made you stop whatever you were doing and just listen?

Out Of My Province by Nadia Reid.

● What song instantly takes you back to your school disco?

Quite a few. ‘Geno’ by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, ‘Embarrassment’ by Madness, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ by Depeche Mode, ‘Going Underground’ by The Jam, ‘Too Much Too Young’ by The Specials, ‘Antmusic’ by Adam and the Ants, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Dire Straits (the inevitable end of night slowie). And probably 'Oops Upside Your Head' (12” single version) by The Gap Band, although apart from just now I don’t think I’ve heard that song for 42 years.

● What music did your parents play that you initially rejected but later embraced?

My dad’s favourite song was ‘Country Roads’ by John Denver. I used to hate it’s squeaky clean, bland, sentimental MOR-ness with a passion, but I have grown to love it and in recent years it became the one cover which would be guaranteed to get everyone singing along at the end of our Beach House Music Club live residency evenings in Worthing.

● Which song lives in your memory word for word that would cause raised eyebrows if you suddenly performed it flawlessly at karaoke night?

I had to check this, and yes, it’s still there: ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ by Meat Loaf. All 9 minutes 49 seconds of it. My Departure Lounge bandmate Chris and I used to do this backstage before gigs, if there was a piano in the dressing room. Good times.

● What song served as the backdrop to your first genuine heartbreak, and troubles you to hear it now?

Not exactly the backdrop, but ‘O Caroline’ by Matching Mole is a song from a difficult period in my life that still gets me. Gorgeous and heartbreaking in equal measure. I defy anyone who makes music and has been in a relationship to not find it deeply affecting. Like Brian Eno says about his relationship with the Velvet Underground’s third album (probably my single favourite album also), I try not to listen to it too often so as not to diminish its power. ‘I Can't Leave Her' by Balloon is a song I have similar feelings about.

● What’s a single line from a song that has stuck with you like a mantra or a piece of life-changing advice?

"You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run."

● What was the first song you ever learned to play on an instrument (even badly)?

‘And I Love Her’ by The Beatles.

● What’s your go-to song for pure, uncomplicated, turn-it-up-and-dance joy?

‘Once in a Lifetime’ by Talking Heads.

Magnetic North

by Jeff Young

8 : Fallen Angel

The dark philosophers we used to meet in pubs are still there in the Angel, hunched over glasses of rum and halves of warm mild, talking of football pools and horses. Hands hover over ritual materials - tobacco and Rizla, ballpoint pen, the Echo. They’re marking kisses on Spot the Ball and stubbing out rollies in overflowing ashtrays. Sometimes one of them will sing a line or two of some old half-forgotten parlour song in a cracked voice murmur, with a sigh of melancholy yearning. Perhaps a beam of light, speckled with dust motes, momentarily illuminates the gloom.

Derelict pubs, domain of phantom drinkers are everywhere in Liverpool, shuttered, burned out, collapsing. An architecture of melancholy. Back in the day, when the pubs were like chapels, the old men were already halfway to ghosthood, haunting their dark saloons. Now, they’re gathered in the afterlife of the Angel, in the ultimate stay-behind...

I only drank here once, sometime in the 1980’s in the lock in hours of a Monday afternoon. Somewhere there’s a photograph of me taken by Sean Halligan – or rather it’s a photo of my absence, just my glass of Guinness, notebook and pen – taken in those daytime boozing days when I used to declare that I belonged in pubs. The photo is like a premonition of my own disappearance.

September 2025, I stand in the street outside the Angel. Buddleia rewilds the gutters, plaster faces stare down at me – Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the skulls of forgotten aldermen, perhaps. Remember the days when we used to meet on corners in the early dark of winter afternoons? “Fancy a pint?” We’d slope off down the rainy streets and dip into the alehouse. Into pubs just like the Angel. The old men barely noticed us, but we watched them, eavesdropped on their stories. The brotherhood of the beer mat and ashtray. They’re not dead, the dark philosophers, they’re in there now, spectral shadow men.

If you listen, you can still hear the songs.

— Jeff Young, 17 September 2025

—

Jeff Young, who currently holds the prestigious TLS Ackerley Prize for his memoir Wild Twin, continues his work as the city's most attentive observer of what remains of forgotten places. Here he documents not just a pub, but an entire afterlife - a "stay-behind" populated by the dark philosophers and half-forgotten parlour songs of a Liverpool that now exists just beyond our line of sight. He treats all these spaces as living archives, where the ghosts and the echoes of their stories are preserved. Jeff's ongoing exhibition of notebooks and collages, Haunted Paper, is now in its final week at Dorothy in the Baltic Triangle - a last chance to see the raw materials of his memory work.

Songs for the Last Dance at the Social Club

with Studio Electrophonique

Some artists chase the future; James Leesley seems more interested in excavating a particular, beautifully rendered version of the past. As the creative force behind Studio Electrophonique, he crafts songs that feel less written and more discovered, as if they’ve been waiting patiently in the smoky backroom of a Sheffield social club since 1983. This is also music imbued with the DNA of classic songsmiths, the slap-back echo of a glitter-ball era and the quiet of everyday longing.

James was, for a time, part of our own Violette Records family. It was a partnership forged in the quiet magic of transcendence - taking his bedroom cassette recordings and elevating them to meticulously crafted artefacts through considered typography, precise sleeve weights and an almost religious attention to detail. Though he now releases his work elsewhere, our kinship remains. His new, self-titled album is out next week, produced by Simon Tong, is a masterclass in his signature style: finding the monumental in the mundane, the epic in the everyday.

It felt only right to invite him into these pages for a conversation about his process, his obsession with detail and the profound, enduring magic of a Tascam reel-to-reel — Matt Lockett

Let’s start with the new record - what did you set out to capture with it, and how close do you feel you got?

I wanted it to feel like a continuation of Buxton Palace Hotel and Happier Things; the style, the sound and delivery - I just wanted to do more of it. So I did. I guess the addition of Simon Tong brings a new dimension on guitar - but he knows what he's doing and tapped into my world quicker than I did. The use of an 8-track 1/4" tape machine, as opposed to a 4-track cassette deck, gives the sound a touch more richness and warmth which I think adds to the album and is a natural recording progression. It also has eight tracks (though I think we only ever used seven), which meant I didn't have to record tambourine and vocals at the same time and could even chuck a Casio vibraphone in for good measure! Studio Vibraphonique.

What were the most important factors for you in choosing to work with a new label this time around?

That they could fulfil a lifelong supply of Comté.

Back when we worked together, a lot of care went into the artwork and typography, drawing on the elegance of those classic 60s sleeves. This time, the design is stripped right back. What led to that choice?

My whole approach to the record followed french airman, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's maxim: ‘Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away'.’ I used that as a guide in every aspect; lyrics, arrangements and the design...I worked endlessly with the label, and my friend Alex in Sheffield, to achieve a particular combination of colours and typefaces that suited the record. We wanted it to look simple and industrious but also have a feeling of luxury and timelessness. I acknowledge Sheffield too - there's a minimalist, almost factory catalogue-style logo, which is a typeface from the early thirties made in Sheffield by the 'Stephenson Blake' foundry, and on the reverse is 'S13' which is the postcode for Handsworth where I grew up...and also the postcode of Ken Patten's original Studio Electrophonique.

Another Sheffield-y concept is that the outer is minimal and no-frills, yet on the inside there's this 12-page cinematic booklet bursting with colour and all these emotional lyrics of love and longing. Subtle, but it's there.

The attention to detail went up a notch with this I think and I'm really proud of how it looks. I hope everyone else thinks the same. It's got the high-end matte laminate finish too which was just the icing on the cake.

How did the collaboration with Simon Tong come about, and what drew you to work together?

We met through a mutual friend. I played a show in London and Simon came along and didn't hate it. I met him for a brew the next day at his house and he had all these reel-to-reels and vintage guitars and old organs...my kinda place...then I looked up and there was this massive sun-bleached portrait of Jake Thackray hung up on the wall. A few months later we decided to work on something, no real plan, just play and record - play some darts and listen to The Byrds - record a bit more - then more darts - then record...that kinda thing. We eventually ended up with this record. Great days.

How did the dynamic of writing and recording with Simon differ from your previous solo approach?

Quite a lot and not at all. I guess at first it was hard for me to relinquish responsibility and trust the process of collaboration - nothing to do with Simon - more to do with me having so much control and connection to the music for so long. I knew I had to loosen my grip for the good of the music. Simon's approach and ability was key to that happening; he's a patient wizard that can do anything musically, and once I'd heard him play on David and Jayne that was it, we were off. I still had my moments though - 'nipping' all the way home for a slightly different drum machine...going daft over a non-existent change in tempo...that kinda thing. My idea was to try and make it sound as if I was playing these songs in the back room of some boozer and Simon had wandered in, picked up his guitar and started playing along, all loose and instinctive. I think that's the only way you can capture top jazzers like him; don't show them the chords and just press record. Apart from the playing and extra sounds though, my approach was very much the same as before: get it all sounding good in my head, choose the gear and then see what happens.

I’ve always felt songs like ‘Buxton Palace Hotel’, ‘Happier Things’ and now ‘David and Jayne’ are just stonewall classics, the kind that sound like they’ve existed forever. When you write songs of that quality, can you recognise it yourself in the moment, or does it only reveal itself later?

Well, first - thanks. But no, I have no idea really, I'm operating so close to the lyrics and melody (it feels like I'm inside it sometimes) that I can't really gain any perspective on it, not like a listener anyway. I'm so occupied with reaching the point where I think 'Yes! that's it' ..a lyric or a line...that I don't really stop to look at the thing as a whole. But that's my favourite bit of the whole process I'd say, being in pursuit of the next moment, the next piece of the puzzle. I can't really step back and listen properly until way after, by which point of course I've heard it too many times! It's nice though when I look back I still think it's alright - ‘David and Jayne’ is a good example; I spent ages revising those lines to make sure each word was in the right place (one word can change everything!). It's got some of my favourite lines in it that one. I'm glad you like it.

For fans who’ve followed you from your earliest songs, what do you think will be the biggest surprise on this new record?

I hope there aren't too many surprises. I would say I've covered more ground sonically; there's a piano on there(!), a couple of different drum machines...and also moments where I've tried to explore unknown chords (How Can I Love Anyone Else?) - that one ended up having these weird chords that I didn't know the names of...still don't...I just found them on the organ - it was as though they'd always been embedded in the words and melody. Oh, and there's one tune Too Many Lonely Nights that runs for nearly six minutes! What's happened to me? To be fair, after we'd recorded the main rhythm, we just sat there listening to it going round and round...it's got this moresih, catalytic quality that I don't land on very often. But overall, it's all coming from the same place as in the earlier days.

Looking ahead, what do you want the next chapter of your music to be about?

I've got all on with this Divine Comedy tour this month - that's all I can think of at the moment - but going forwards, I've got a few songs in my head that are feeling like trailers to the next chapter...new characters...narrative development...I've got my eye on this brilliant organ that I'm saving up for that I think will be the ideal sonic backdrop for the next songs. The car-boot season is sadly coming to a close though so the chances of a bargain are looking slim, I'm probably going to have to pay through the nose, but it'll be worth it.

Starter For Ten

By Nik Kavanagh

The old adage goes that you only get one chance to make a first impression and for me this is never truer than with a song’s opening lyric. First lines are crucial in grabbing the listener’s attention and pulling them into the rest of the track and if your opening gambit is shit, you run the risk of losing them.

Now I’m aware all art is subjective, and comparison is the thief of joy, but I just couldn't help myself. In no particular order, here's 10 of my favourite opening lines:

● Bless my cotton socks I’m in the news.
’Reward’ by The Teardrop Explodes

Part something your nan would say part Cope’s exhilaration at the band’s burgeoning success.

● I got a letter from the government the other day, opened it and read it, it said they were suckers.
’Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos’ by Public Enemy

Raw, angry, rebellious and completely bad ass.

● Summer was gone and the heat died down and Autumn reached for her golden crown
’Time of No Reply’ by Nick Drake

Bucolic and ethereal, perfectly capturing the melancholic transition between seasons.

● Shove your funding up your arse, we don't want your money.
’Death Grip Kids ‘by The Lovely Eggs

No nonsense opener from Lancaster’s finest. Holly shouting her head off on behalf of anyone who has ever had to fill in a funding application.

● Compulsory participation is not my idea of motivation, it’s not that I would ever give in, it’s just I’d rather not get involved.
’Just Idleness’ by Cranebuilders

An anthem for the indifferent outsider, the lyrical equivalent of a nonchalant shrug.

● When I look back upon my life it’s always with a sense of shame, I've always been the one blame.
’It's A Sin’ by Pet Shop Boys

Neil Tennant setting the scene to give Catholicism a kick up the arse.

● Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.
'‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by The Beatles

Psychedelic, otherworldly, and effortlessly cool. A few years on from singing about wanting to hold hands Lennon is now inviting us all to let go of our conscious selves.

● Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone, I hear you call my name, and it feels like home.
’Like A Prayer’ by Madonna

Existential pop poetry. Passionate, provocative, liturgical and layered.

● Does your god have a great big dick 'cos it feels like he's fucking me.
’Your God (God's Dick)’ by Laura Jane Grace In The Trauma Tropes

An exercise in bad language and blasphemy. Hilarious and catchy as hell.

● Whop bop b-luma a-lop-bam-boom.
’Tutti Frutti’ by Little Richard

An a cappella rallying cry which means nothing and everything all at once. And who even cares what it means when it sounds this fucking good?

—

Nicholas Ian Kavanagh (Nik) loves swimming, plays the electric bass guitar, and enjoys the process over the end product. The secret of his youthful appearance is mashed swede. As a face mask, as a night cap and in as an emergency as a draught excluder.

Fucking Cantona

by Rob Schofield

Three of us have gathered upstairs in the Baa Bar to watch the final from Wembley where the Reds are taking on United. It is May 11th, 1996. We are living through the last knockings of Thatcher’s Britain, facing down the end of times with music, booze and whatever else we can lay our hands on. As I have said, we are three at the table: Paco, around whom we gravitate and at whose home in Kensington, being closest to the action, we habitually gather; Miguel, over from Warrington; and yours truly, who has made the trip from Sheffield, the latest stop on a circuitous route home. We are two LFC fans and one Norwich City supporter who has adopted – this we allow, because we love him – the only team that matters as his second-now-first team.

The thing about this gathering upstairs in the Baa Bar is that we are meant to fuck off home after the game. What we are not meant to do is hang around until the clubbers – friends and comrades, and us most weeks – arrive in their finery, bringing glamour where there has moments before been the kind of despair that tramples on your heart when you get beaten by United or your lover informs you that they no longer wish to reside in the vicinity of your bosom. The plan was to have a few bevvies, watch the match, celebrate or (I’ve had a feeling all day that this will be the case) drown our sorrows and then retire to Paco’s bijou abode for hashish, mushrooms or MDMA. We are not yet in the habit of mixing alcohol with class As and Bs in public, but the thing is, dear listener, that the match is not a good one for neutrals; and nor is it for one half of our fair city and all three of us upstairs in the Baa Bar. A late winner, five minutes from time – as inevitable as the bastard apocalypse – from the other team’s exalted Frenchman sends our half of the city into a stinking mood. Fucking Cantona.

Said stinking mood will not endure, however. It is, after all, a Saturday. There remain possibilities, including oblivion, which is always and very much on offer. Not that we are thinking that way. We are resolved on nothing further than the next bottle of continental lager and what is now a vague agreement to retreat chez-Paco. We are, in short, intent on banishing heartache. Things change, though, and anyone who has spent an afternoon and evening in a watering hole will know of what I speak: there comes a point when the relaxed, neutral tones of lunch and teatime give way to something more pressing. As day turns to night, the post-defeat gloom drains, albeit as slow as a blocked urinal. Dance music commandeers the speakers, legs begin to jerk and feet tap. The beautiful people sweep in with their perfumes and shiny faces and an air of expectation. They wield an unseen, but not unspoken, demand for fun which is at once their birthright and a thing of abstract beauty that will forever be hard to credit.

Our barman has disappeared, so I tread a careful path down the vertiginous staircase, by now half-filled with punters on the lookout for friends and suppliers. I nestle into a space at the main bar, surprised and elated to encounter the three Cs – Carol, Caroline and Clare – long term comrades-in-arms in the war against banality. This is the moment that Caroline, eyes as wide as ever and naturally so, asks the fatal question: ‘Are yous comin’ to Cream or what?’

Some minutes later, bottles delivered to impatient and thirsty amigos, Caroline’s inquiry is scrutinized. There are practicalities to consider: will we get in looking like this; how much money have we got; and where’s the nearest cash point? We examine our clothes, cross our fingers and remind each other that Caroline knows Tommy, the veteran bouncer who works the door. We exit Baa Bar, turn left and then right onto Slater Street, down which we wobble with intent, staring at the meat wagons with impunity since we have nothing of interest in our pockets or intimate cavities. We bumble past the long line on Parr Street and onto Wolstenholme Square, where Nation, a nondescript venue on any other evening, hosts our favourite club night. We sail through the members’ entrance with nary a problem. Cream it is then and you might as well write Sunday off.

We circle the club before settling in The Back Room. We’re on edge, slurping double vodkas and Red Bulls through three straws apiece without taking our eyes from the exit and entry points. We’re on the lookout for a certain ponytail, but word has come down the line that he’s been at Wembley and might not be in tonight. Superstar DJs may enjoy the advantages of helicopter travel, but ordinary mortals, including football fans, reprobates and drug dealers, journey by train, coach, or car. We have calculated that he has plenty of time to get himself back up the M6 if he is so inclined; but the not knowing is agony. This is what happens when you don’t have a plan. Things, by which I mean the procurement of substances guaranteed to thrill, should not be left to chance.

Visitors trickle in, eyes agog, respectful, and somewhat fearful. This makes sense, since they’re away from home and unsure of what to expect and when to expect it. We recognise and empathise with those feelings, united as we are in the pursuit of pleasure. This is a place of solidarity, where strangers hug and promise to keep in touch and then forget each other when daylight comes. I make this observation to Paco, adding that in Nation were are one nation, and tonight we are the Cream of the crop. He rolls his eyes and lights a fag.

It comes as no surprise that there are Man U fans in, but we must be civil despite our wounded souls. In clubs, in the 1990s, this is how it is. By the end of the night, we’ll all be in love. We trade secrets and contraband, although the latter is in short supply tonight and those who are holding are not yet for sharing. That’s fine too, since the unwritten rule is that you have to be sorted before you can help another out. Ponytails come and go, but not the one we are seeking. Several of his crew sport similar coiffure, including his right-hand man, who pauses only to nod as he passes by. Ah, the nod: meaningless and imperceptible to our visitors, but priceless to those in the know. We follow him to the void behind a stack of speakers which are vibrating like fuck and god knows how they’ll last the night. This evening’s delicacy is White Doves, or Doves, since white is the default and the best kind. A tenner a pop, the usual price.

Fast forward two or three hours and Tommy has allowed us up the staircase in the main room to the VIP area. We share the space with people off Brookside, Hollyoaks and a guy who plays a bobby in Heartbeat who looks different dressed in civvies. I’m talking broken biscuits to a couple from Derby who are attempting to keep their heads while they come up on something that wasn’t a Dove. It’s my usual crap about books they must read, but at some point an almighty head rush brings with it the realisation that I am not going on about Kerouac or Fitzgerald or Irvine Welsh. I’m telling them about my girlfriend’s mum and dad and how they rescue animals like a pigeon flown off an oil rig which they nurtured back to health before releasing in the back garden, where it lives a flightless, but well-fed life. Next up I tell the story of the baby hedgehog which they had to bring indoors because it wasn’t big enough to survive the winter. The girl’s interested in the hedgehog, which when all’s said and done is cuter than a greasy pigeon, and she leans in to hear the end of the story. My problem is that I enjoy the telling so much, that being in the moment, that I don’t stop to think about how the story ends. I’m off my head of course, out of my tree like that pigeon, and unlike that pigeon, I’m flying. I’m sweating, shaking, and rushing, pulling huge gobby grins and running my hands through my sidies. The words are piling up, desperate to escape my gurning cakehole. What happened to it? Someone’s said something, but that tune’s a corker and I’m thinking about standing up and getting over to The Annexe for a spell on the ledge, which is the best place to dance. What happened to it? My hand is tugged, but gently so. What happened to it? I look down and the girl’s eyes are begging me to finish the story. The boyfriend is asleep, eyes closed at the very least, but she wants to know What happened to the hedgehog? I take her head in my hands and kiss her forehead as gracefully as I can manage. It didn’t make it.

The music stops, the lights go up and we wade through a gluey mess of sodden flyers, reluctant to enter the cold, hard streets of the new day. Groups huddle against the damp, regretting thin dresses and t-shirts, cadging ciggies, and arguing about who forgot to get the coats. We’re still on one, and the prospect of what awaits in Kensington is keeping us warm. We shake some hands, hug some bodies and say our farewells. A girl I should, but don’t remember says something about a hedgehog as we make our way to Slater Street. Fucking Cantona will be on the front and back pages later on, his defiant Gallic pose chiselled onto our retinas; but for now we’ll seek comfort in community and the passionate friendships we’ll mourn when life loosens the ties that bind us. Some of us are cursed, you see, to swim against the tide in our solipsistic oceans, drowning men with no one around to hear our cries for salvation.

—

Rob Schofield was born on the North West coast, ventured north, south, east and west before returning home a couple of years back. Rob writes fiction mostly, but dabbles in whatever comes his way. In 2021 he received a Northern Writers Debut Fiction Award for his debut novel, The Queen of Kirkhill. Rob has also written a collection of short stories, and is working on a second novel. He writes character-led, accessible literary fiction. He has a passion for clean, precise prose and for naturalistic dialogue. He writes about ordinary, everyday people and the extraordinary amount of strength and courage to live what we carelessly describe as ordinary lives. He approaches his characters with empathy and compassion, and searches for moments of joy and beauty in the mundane and banal. He writes with humour and grit, and tries to put readers deep into the heart of his stories from the get-go. Writing as Stan Fenton, Rob has begun to write crime fiction for fun.

How Do You Build Trust With a Blank Space?

by Eimear Kavanagh

I'm not sure how a non-artist would respond to this question but to me a blank space means a blank canvas.

There is a massive sense of doom if I face this blank space without an idea of what I want to do - in particular with painting or drawing. There have been times when I felt so excited by a new sketch book or some beautiful hand crafted paper only to get home, look at it and then have no idea what to do, even for fear of ruining the paper. Then stack it away for another time and that other time might not come.

The internet is booming with 'how to' videos by artists which I find really helpful if I am feeling blocked. My favourite one that's worth a mention here is Chloe Briggs’ Drawing Is Free where for a small monthly subscription you can join live classes or do them in your own time. She is magnificent for people of all levels of experience so go and check her out if you are feeling playful. I find her drawing exercises to be like little gems, one thing can lead to another, and another and before I know it I am back in full flow again.

Love, Eimear

—

Eimear Kavanagh’s relationship with blank spaces is, by all accounts, a complex and occasionally adversarial one. She doesn’t treat new sketchbooks as opportunities, but as pristine, intimidating landscapes that she must first survey from a safe distance, sometimes for several months. She is known to leave sheets of expensive, handmade paper in different rooms of her house, believing that each space imbues the paper with a different ‘emotional potential’ and that she must wait for it to tell her what it wants to become. She quietly admits that her most successful works began only after she accidentally spilled tea on the page, an act she describes as ‘a necessary violation of perfection’ that finally allows the real conversation to begin.

The Gen Alpha Lexicography

by Maya Chen

06: 'Sus'

Etymology: Gaming culture, specifically the social deduction game Among Us (c. 2020), mainstream adoption via Twitch and TikTok. An abbreviation of ‘suspicious.’

Last week I paid my daughter a simple, unprompted compliment. "‘You look lovely today,’ I said, with what I thought was genuine maternal affection. She stopped, narrowed her eyes, and offered a one-word diagnosis that chilled me to my very core: ‘Sus.’

'Sus' is the native tongue of a generation raised in a world of deepfakes, catfish and performative authenticity. It is cognitive shorthand for the ambient, low-grade paranoia that now governs all social interaction. To declare something 'sus' is not merely to find it suspicious; it is to identify it as a potential counterfeit in the vast, unstable marketplace of reality.

The word’s genius lies in its origin. In the game Among Us, players are trapped on a spaceship with a hidden imposter, and their survival depends on collectively identifying and ejecting the fraud based on the flimsiest of evidence - a strange glance, a slightly-too-quick movement, a ‘vibe.’ 'Sus' is the language of the paranoid survivor.

Gen Alpha has correctly identified that this is no longer a game; it is the basic condition of modern life. Is that social media influencer genuinely happy, or are they performing happiness for engagement? Is that news story real, or is it algorithmically generated rage-bait? Is my mother’s compliment an act of love, or is it a manipulative prelude to asking me to tidy my room? In a world where anything can be faked, everything becomes suspect.

What makes 'sus' so damning is that it requires no evidence. It is not an accusation to be debated; it is a final verdict delivered by intuition. It bypasses the laborious process of critical thinking and moves directly to condemnation. It is the ultimate vibe check, and anything that fails it is summarily ejected from the airlock of credibility. 'Sus' is the sound a generation makes when it can no longer distinguish between the real and the perfectly rendered copy.

Next week: 'Cringe' - The ultimate verdict on someone else's failed attempt at being a person.

—

Maya Chen has a PhD in Sociolinguistics, a fact her children find both irrelevant and deeply suspicious. They're not entirely wrong. Her ongoing project, The Gen Alpha Lexicography, is essentially a collection of field notes gathered from the most hostile territory imaginable: her own kitchen. She operates on the theory that she is an objective observer of linguistic evolution, a claim her children would describe, with a weary sigh, as "peak cringe." She is, in other words, a mother who has found a way to rebrand her profound and escalating bewilderment as academic research.

La Violette Società 58

Our next Società is happening on Tuesday, 30th September at Ten Streets Social in Liverpool.

Granfalloon, 6FA Maisie, Beatnik Hurricane, and Plazzybag.

Click the poster below to buy a ticket.

Waking The Witch

by Ange Woolf

I can feel myself waking up
Shifting from this world
To one that lies
On the other side
A mirror reflection
Looking back at me
It looks like me
But her gaze
Her gaze!
Contains
Sight of a million lives
On sea and on land
Speaking in languages
I don’t understand
Continents crossed
Battles lost
Wars waged
Souls caged
Through our eyes
She transfers her mind
Her heart and soul collide
With mine
I feel the change
Somewhere
In between
Both worlds
Where our memories
Meet and
Duplicate
Hers overlaying
Replicating
The scenes of core defining
Memory binding
Shaping
Thoughts
A guarded void
Hungry but
Always full
Of cobwebbed ghosts
Their cries of shame
Howl in pain
I steady myself
Fresh wind rushes in
Lifting thick dust
From corners
Obscured
By superficial walls
Constructed to protect
Their futile attempt
To stand strong
And tall
Against her force
Valiant but weary
They fall
She takes my hands
Face to face
Connecting us
In time
And space
She is in me
She is me
And we are awake.

—

Ange Woolf, who famously charts the public territories of bus routes and the quiet republic of her own home, now reports from a much stranger, more ancient landscape: the other side of the mirror. Her new poem, ‘Waking the Witch,"‘is a field note from the precise moment of psychic collision, when the self you know meets the ‘million-lived’ self you've always been. In our recent correspondence, she revealed that this piece arrived fully formed after she spent an entire afternoon staring into a puddle on Smithdown Road, which she claims began to show her a reflection that wasn't entirely her own. She posits that our reflections are not just light bouncing back, but ancestral echoes, patiently waiting for us to look long enough to finally see them.

The Peculiar Comfort of British Weirdness

by Tom Roberts

Like many of us at this time of year, I’ve just come back from holiday.

A domestic family holiday.

A very English kind of holiday.

Not the sun, sand and Instagram-style picture postcard holiday, but a lovely holiday all the same.

Like most of us, I cherish these special moments when they happen.

I’ve said in earlier pieces, ‘I take my joy where I can find it,’ and if you can get the weather, the British countryside is hard to beat.
Outdoor activities, cold water swimming, liquid sunshine and wildlife.
Hills, trees, rivers and the kind of National Trust countryside that makes you wonder why you didn’t have a domestic holiday.

What’s not to love… if you get the weather?

Oh, and the people. The food.

And yet coming back from a British holiday, really from any holiday, always leaves me with the same question:
‘Was that actually relaxing or was it just a bit weird?’
I know that’s not a conventional outlook and I’d be the first to admit I’m probably not the most normal person in the world.

Who is?

I tend to wear my weirdness as a badge of honour.

But you know what I mean, right?
Who wants to be normal?
Right?

Anyway, it got me thinking about one of my favourite English directors, Ben Wheatley.

I mention this because, to me, no one captures the peculiar tension and energy of a British holiday quite like Wheatley in Sightseers (2012).
Also, he has a couple of new films on the horizon that I’m excited about.

Bulk is currently showing at various film festivals, and Normal, starring Bob Odenkirk, is coming out later in the year.

Now, you might be surprised to hear this, but I don’t consider myself an aficionado of British cinema.

I don’t consider myself an aficionado of any cinema, to be honest.

But to my mind, Wheatley is one of the most distinctive, unsettling and surprising English directors of recent years.

I’m told Sightseers was a favourite of the Violette Film Club.

If you haven’t seen it, where do I begin without giving too much away

Think Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May crossed with Terrence Malick’s Badlands, but set in Knaresborough, Keswick, Fountains Abbey and the Ribblehead Viaduct.
In caravans with knitwear and wool.

The line ‘He’s not a person, Tina, he’s a Daily Mail reader’ tells you everything about the streak of class resentment, social awkwardness, humour and sudden violence that runs through the film.

It’s an England you’ll all be familiar with, even if it’s not quite the England you’re usually familiar with.

I think it’s a perfect dark comedy and it went a long way to cementing Wheatley’s reputation as a cult English director, mentioned in the same breath as Alan Clarke, Nicolas Roeg and Ken Russell.

Wheatley often collaborates closely with his wife and co-writer Amy Jump.

The couple have been described as ‘one of the most formidable creative partnerships in film’ and when their combined minds get working on a project, things start to get really unpredictable.
They turn established notions of genre and convention completely upside down.

Their films remain consistent with a distinctly British cinema tradition.
They draw on the social realism of Play for Today and the stylised scares of the ITV-aired Hammer House of Horror.
They also channel the dark, deadpan humour of British TV comedy, from The League of Gentlemen to the playful, offbeat slacker comedy of 90s shows like Spaced.

Wheatley and Jump’s work is often associated with folk and occult themes, crime thrillers, dark comedy and dystopian sci-fi.
Yet even those labels undersell them. The power of their films lies in the way they blend and subvert conventions to create something unexpected that still feels deeply familiar.

Whether it’s the creeping dread of Kill List, the domestic claustrophobia of Down Terrace, the hallucinatory folk horror of A Field in England, the brutalist social satire of High-Rise, or the pandemic paranoia of In the Earth.
Wheatley’s films never settle for being just one thing.

What ties them together is more than genre play.

Wheatley excels at casting familiar British TV faces like Reece Shearsmith, Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley, then flipping our expectations.
Smiley in particular can turn from loveable, floppy and friendly to terrifying in a breath.
It’s this mix of the recognisably British and the deeply unsettling that makes Wheatley’s work so distinctive.

And that’s the point. His films are never just one thing.
Kill List isn’t simply horror, it is domestic drama, thriller and occult nightmare.
Sightseers is romcom, road movie and slasher flick all at once.
He takes the hallmarks of British cinema with its humour, grit, folk horror, social realism and eccentricity and reinvents them.

Which brings me back to my holiday.
Like a Wheatley film, it wasn’t straightforwardly relaxing.
It was odd, unsettling, sometimes funny, sometimes bleak and always a little weird, yet it left a lasting impression and one I find myself coming back to.

—

Tom Roberts cultivates discomfort like others tend gardens. From his rain-splattered Liverpool window, he catalogues the subtle gradations of British grey with the precision of someone who once mistook melancholy for a personality trait. His laptop contains exactly seventeen unfinished songs, each abandoned at precisely the moment the chorus threatened to become memorable. A collector of obscure British film ephemera and discontinued breakfast cereals, Tom navigates the world with the measured expectations of someone who finds profound joy in a properly brewed cup of tea on an otherwise disappointing day. His cultural recommendations arrive like unexpected weather breaks during a camping holiday - rare, precious and suspiciously well-timed.

Flies In The Vaseline

A compilation of songs that reflect the musical tastes of Arthur Arnold, frontman of Tigers & Flies. Click the image above to listen.

Eel Men - 'Archetype'
Handle - 'In Tension'
Beau Mec - 'International Boy'
Perspex - 'Indecision Never Knows'
XTC - 'Heatwave Mark 2 Deluxe'
Buffet Lunch, Me Lost Me - 'Carcassone'
Norma Tanega - 'I'm the Sky'
The Jam - 'I Got By In Time' /demo
XTC - 'Grass’ /home demo
The Claim - 'Sporting Life'
The Go-Betweens - 'People Say'
The Epitome Of Sound - 'You Don't Love Me'
Richie Havens - 'I Can't Make It Anymore' 
Key & Cleary - 'Help Build Buffalo' 
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, LSO - 'Movement 6' 
Norma Tanega - 'A Song For a Friend Who Died'

An Invitation

We are collectors of quiet rebellions. The un-sent draft, the field recording on your phone, the photograph that doesn't fit any series, the story you wrote for no one but yourself. This newsletter is a home for those beautiful orphans.

If you have work that explores the spaces in between, we invite you to share it. Direct your findings to matt@violetterecords.com.