My Dad died recently. It was a quick, senseless but ultimately inevitable event made all the more onerous by the fact that we were never really that religious. No choir of angels signalled his release from this life, just as no pearly-white gate marked his entry into some nebulous, cloudy expanse of heaven. Dad died and there was no clear way of getting in touch with him anymore, no place we could meet up, have a drink, a smoke, chat about last night’s footie, exchange poorly informed views about politics, lament his terminal pessimism, his insistence on wearing at least three layers of clothing or even just an opportunity to say, ‘what was all that about’? Unlike many of his everlasting trips to the lavatory, this time there was no coming back. No cubicle to follow him into. If there wasn’t a heaven, what I needed was some other kind of place we could meet up, somewhere where we could toss aside the fundamental grief and monotony of this world and enter some other kind of reality; a holiday world, a world were you could actually wear too many layers of clothing, where talking nonsense about politics wasn’t a thing of shame but something to be celebrated, where things didn’t just drain of colour and stop breathing but remained dazzling, vibrant and reality-less forever.
‘The Sounds of Monsterism Island’ was such a place.
Described as a ‘bug-eyed weekend break from reality’ ‘The Sounds Of Monsterism Island’ is a collection of randomly psychedelic oddments from the late sixties through to today put together and curated by ‘Monsterism’ toy and sleeve designer, Pete Fowler as famous for work for the Super Furry Animals, The Magic Numbers, Ninetendo, the Sony Play Station, Kia Motors as he is for his strange, bug-eyed plastic figures.
From the cooing and reflective ‘Island’ by Millenium to the Monkees-sized sprinkling of cotton-candy loveliness that is ‘Cotton Candy Sandman’ by Harpers Bizarre, this Heavenly released collection proves a classic emporium of whimsical peculiarity. Like any good holiday, you might not know the names of many folks when you arrive here but you’ll be perfectly acquainted with them by the end.
By way of a personal tribute, I quote (with some degree of licence) Eden Ahbez’s ‘Full Moon’, the penultimate track on the album:
‘and in the evening, when the sky is on fire heaven and earth become my great open cathedral where all men are brothers, where all things are crowned with love……I walk by the surf, make a fire on the beach………and listen to the shameless parping horns of Herb Alpert’s ‘Spanish Flea’ and the tapping drone of the five-o-clock football results on Saturday’s Grandstand before pulling on another layer of clothing and shuffling off into the sunset in the most comfortable of bedroom slippers.’
See you there.