
Fragments from 'Adventures in the House of Memory’, a poem by pyrotechnic drummer and musician Paul Burwell, were performed randomly in locations with different acoustics; by the Thames, under railway bridges, in St Paul's cathedral, over roof tops above the City, in a café, on the Underground, as screams, drills, sirens, footsteps and arias rattle to the drifts of metallic percussion from a recording of Paul drumming solo at the LMC. In a collage of chance polyphony, words from the poem are scratched the length of 35mm struck stock with a potato peeler, layered in loops and arabesques over scraps of Super 8 and 16mm footage from the '80's, '90's, Burwell era with flares, ropes, derelict buildings, knives, fighting, graffiti and peeling walls…
If you mix religious rituals with dark mythology, the result will be effective, and the story powerful in 90% of the cases. That is exactly what happens at the beginning of The Vigil.
Haven't you heard? There's a new horror subgenre: cerebral gore, that's probably been around for decades and we're now just starting to talk about it.