Festive Season Madness...

So perhaps starting a blog at the end of December may not have been the best move in terms of being able to produce a lot of content. But hey, that's how this crazy cat rolls!

2012 WILL be amazeballs - I've got robots, weddings, burlesque, pinups, comix and more....

In the meantime, I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

 

The theremin - truly out of this world!

Leon Theremin, 1924

Truly the most awesome instrument in the history of music has to be the theremin.  It is the ultimate atompunk instrument and the epitome of cool. You can take your grungy electric guitars and your kitschy ukuleles but give me a theremin every time, baby! 

The theremin was invented after the Russian revolution and civil war by physicist Lev Sergeivich Termen in October 1920 as a byproduct of government research in proximity sensors. Termen later travelled to America under the somewhat anglicised name Léon Theremin and brought his “aetherphone” to the West and the theremin was born. 

Popular for its unique extraterrestrial sound the theremin is synonymous with creepy, spooky, otherworldy goings on and THE instrument of the atomic age – just look at Bernard Herrmann’s theme tune for The Day the Earth Stood still... 

So being musically dyslexic as I am I decided the theremin was for me - after all you just waft your hands about and get a cool and creepy sci-fi sound right? Right? Actually, wrong.  Apparently the theremin is one of the hardest musical instruments to master, with many professional musicians giving up on the thing in despair! Bugger.

Just look at the concentration on professional thereminist Thomas Grillo’s face in this youtube clip to see what I mean.   

The man is playing a simple scale and he yet his concentration is so intense.  This is a man who, if interrupted whilst playing the theremin, might very well cut you. And cut you bad.

So it’s hard to master. Really, really, hard. And they don’t come cheap either – a decent Moog theremin will set you back around £350.00.  And yet, despite my severe lack of musical talent (my music teacher once begged me not o come back to lessons) and the bohemian state of finances, I really bloody want one and I will try my hardest to master this thing, even if it takes me years.  Because everybody needs a hobby, right?  And why not one as truly awesome as the theremin?

What the hell is atompunk?!

So we've all heard about steampunk and cyberpunk but what about Atompunk? Where does this fit?

  

Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge as well you know, tells us that atompunk "relates to the pre-digital period of 1945-1965, including mid-century Modernism, the Atomic Age and Space Age, Communism and concern about it exaggerated as paranoia in the USA along with Neo-Soviet styling, underground cinema, Googie architecture, the Sputnik programme, superhero fiction, the rise of the US military/industrial powers and the fall-out of Chernobyl. Its aesthetic tends toward Populuxe and Raygun Gothic, which describe a retro-futuristic vision of the world.^[11]

Atompunk is b-movie sci-fi romps; it's girls in 50s bikinis with rayguns and robots; it's a Kerouacian foray into an atomic future where George Jetson is your neighbour and your best gal hails from Mars. 

Atompunk is cold war kitsch in a pointed bra.

 

So grab a martini, put on your spacesuit and join me outside for some superatomic fun!