"As a child, I devoured the information in my parents copy of Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, published by the Readers Digest in the mid-sixties. Inside its black, embossed covers, was a rich and magical world of Green Men, Stone Circles, Witches, Giants, Haunted Houses and Seasonal Customs. Single-handedly, it engendered my life-long interest in the folklore traditions of these Islands" - Simon Costin, The Museum of British Folklore.
Bibliographic information:
Title: Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain.
Contributors: Reader's Digest Association, Reader's Digest Association Staff
Edition illustrated.
Argleton was a phantom settlement that appeared on Google Maps and Google Earth but does not actually exist. The supposed location of Argleton was just off the A59 road within the civil parish of Aughton in West Lancashire, England, which in reality is nothing more than empty fields. Data from Google are used by other online information services which consequently treated Argleton as a real settlement within the L39 postcode area. As a result, Argleton also appeared in numerous listings for things such as real estate, employment and weather, but although the people, businesses and services listed are all in fact real, they are actually based elsewhere in the same postcode district. As of 30 January 2010, Argleton was no longer in Google Maps.
< One of Roy Bayfield's photographs from the location of the non-existent Argleton. View more of his photographs here.
The anomaly was first noticed by Mike Nolan, head of web services at nearby Edge Hill University, who posted about it on his blog in September 2008. In early 2009 it was investigated further by Nolan's colleague, Roy Bayfield, who walked to the area shown on Google Maps to see if there was anything special about it. Bayfield commented about it on his own blog and described the place as being "deceptively normal" as well as extrapolating the concept of a non-existent place using the tropes of magic realism and psychogeography; the story was later picked up by the local media. By November 2009, news of the non-existent town had received global media attention, and "Argleton" became a popular hashtag on Twitter. As of 23 December 2009, a Google search for "Argleton" was generating around 249,000 hits, and the domain names argleton.com (with the message, "What the hell are they talking about? We, the good citizens of Argleton do exist. Here we are now!") and argleton-village.co.uk (a spoof website describing the history of Argleton, famous "Argletonians" and current events in the fictional village) were claimed. Other websites were selling merchandise with slogans such as "I visited Argleton and all I got was this T-shirt" and "New York, London, Paris, Argleton".
On 18 September 2010, the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Punt, PI' hosted by Steve Punt, investigated the case of Argleton...
One possible explanation for the presence of Argleton is that it was added deliberately as a copyright trap, or "paper town" as they are sometimes known, to catch any violations of copyright, though such bogus entries are typically much less obvious. It has been noted that "Argle" seems to echo the word "Google", while the name is also an anagram of "Not Large" and "Not Real G", with the letter G perhaps representing Google. Alternatively, it has been suggested that "Argleton" is merely a misspelling of "Aughton", although both names appear on the map. "Argle" is also a somewhat common metasyntactic variable, the kind of placeholder names used by computer programmers. "Argle-bargle" is a term for an argument. Professor Danny Dorling, president of the Society of Cartographers, considered it more likely that Argleton was nothing more than an "innocent mistake".
A spokesman for Google stated that, "While the vast majority of this information is correct there are occasional errors", and encouraged users to report any issues directly to their data provider. Data for Google Maps are provided by Netherlands-based Tele Atlas, who were unable to explain how such anomalies could get into their database, but said that Argleton would be removed from the map. It was finally removed sometime around mid-November or early December 2010.
Agloe, New York was invented on a 1930s map as a phantom settlement. In 1950, a general store was built there and named Agloe General Store, as that was the name seen on the map. Therefore, the phantom settlement actually became a real one.
Beatosu and Goblu are two non-existent Ohio towns that were inserted into the 1978–1979 official state of Michigan map. The names refer to the slogan of University of Michigan fans ("Go Blue!") and a reference to their archrivals from the Ohio State University (OSU).
Peter Fletcher, a Michigan alumnus and chairman of the State Highway Commission, inserted the fake towns of "Goblu" (near the real town of Bono, Ohio off State Route 2) and "Beatosu" (near Archbold, Ohio, just south of Interstate 80/Interstate 90/Ohio Turnpike at exit 25). In a 2008 interview, Fletcher explained that a fellow Michigan alumnus had been teasing him about the Mackinac Bridge colors: green and white, the colors of Michigan State University. Fletcher noted that the bridge colors were in compliance with federal highway regulations, so he had no choice in that matter; he did, however, have more control over the state highway map. Fletcher said that he thus ordered a cartographer to insert the two fictitious towns. Road Pig, a member of the Dreadnoks, from the fictional G.I. Joe series, is recorded as having been born in Goblu, Michigan.
A trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential copyright violators of the map who, if caught, would be unable to explain the inclusion of the "trap street" on their map as innocent. On maps that are not of streets, other "copyright trap" features (such as nonexistent towns or mountains with the wrong elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.
Trap streets are often nonexistent streets; but sometimes, rather than actually depicting a street where none exists, a map will misrepresent the nature of a street in a fashion that can still be used to detect copyright violators but is less likely to interfere with navigation. For instance, a map might add nonexistent bends to a street, or depict a major street as a narrow lane, without changing its location or its connections to other streets.
Trap streets are routinely denied and rarely acknowledged by publishers. This is not always the case, however. A popular driver's atlas for the city of Athens, Greece, warns inside its front cover that potential copyright violators should beware of trap streets.
In an edition of the BBC Two programme Map Man, first broadcast 17 October 2005, a spokesman for the Geographer's A–Z Street Atlas company claimed there are "about 100" trap streets included in the London edition of the street atlas. One such street, "Bartlett Place", a genuine but misnamed pedestrian walkway, was identified in the programme, and will appear in future editions under its real name, Broadway Walk.
It has been suggested that Google Earth placed Sandy Island (New Caledonia) as the geographical analog to a Trap Street, although historical evidence implies that it originated as a cartographical error and Google simply passed the error along.
In a 2001 case, the Automobile Association in the United Kingdom agreed to settle a case for £20,000,000 when it was caught copying Ordnance Survey maps. In this case, the identifying "fingerprints" were not deliberate errors but rather stylistic features such as the width of roads.
In another case, the Singapore Land Authority sued Virtual Map, an online publisher of maps, for infringing on their copyright. The Singapore Land Authority stated in their case that there were deliberate errors in maps they had provided to Virtual Map years earlier. Virtual Map denied this and insisted that they had done their own cartography.
An underwater kind of silence, humming of electric pylons, "Don't forget me" fades in static, another scene began... Transparent faces from the old school, no-one to project them onto, he drives by 1958 and someone says his name. He waved out of the film again, he turned and he flickered and he walked away, he felt a distant kind of longing, another scene began...
As the original singer and main songwriter in Ultravox!, Foxx formed and 'designed' the UK's first synthesizer-rock group, working with producer Brian Eno before David Bowie mixed traditional and left-field influences together on his 1977 Low album. In fact, according to John Foxx, 'Brian got the call from Bowie when we were in the studio together'. Ultravox released a series of pioneering tracks which still sound contemporary today, including 'My Sex', 'Young Savage', 'The Man Who Dies Every Day', 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' and 'Dislocation'. Many of them were featured in the recent British movie Awaydays, based on a novel by Liverpool writer Kevin Sampson.
'The starting point for me was being at a party in the '60s and hearing The Beatles 'Tomorrow Never Knows' which had been released that day', reveals Foxx. He realised in an instant that the taped drum loop on 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was essentially a blueprint for the future. 'I sensed that that song had all the elements for everything that was going to happen for the rest of my life. It was a fantastic feeling'. Further inspired by Pink Floyd's experimental, psychedelic 'happenings' and a growing interest in surrealism, Foxx enrolled at the Royal College Of Art in the early 1970s where he founded Ultravox! ('we used to rehearse in the college dining room until they gave us the push for making too much noise') and encountered the likes of Quentin Crisp who modelled at the college and painter Francis Bacon. 'He would only recognise me when he was drunk', laughs Foxx.
Armed with an old analogue synthesizer and a four-track recording machine, Ultravox! gradually began to fuse together elements of Roxy Music, glam and Krautrock, in particular the bands Can and Neu!. After signing to Chris Blackwell's Island Records in the mid-70s, Ultravox! attracted the interest of former Roxy Music pioneer Brian Eno who worked with them on their self-titled debut. Two of the albums highpoints, 'My Sex' and 'I Want To Be A Machine' previewed the sounds and attitudes later adopted by British electronic pop (this was a full year before Kraftwerk's The Man Machine album) - inspiring the likes of Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Duran Duran.
Ultravox!'s follow-up LP Ha! Ha! Ha! was a new wave classic of manic, mad-eyed paranoia, heavy guitars and lush electronic interludes, especially on the pioneering 'The Man Who Dies Everyday' and 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'. Their final album, 1978's Systems Of Romance, was recorded in Germany with Krautrock guru Conny Plank whose previous credits included Kraftwerk and Neu!. Loaded with great songs ('Slow Motion', 'Just For A Moment', 'Dislocation', 'The Quiet Men') this dark, anthemic electro-rock album pointed the way forward in terms of sound, but also Foxx's sleek, elegant artwork for the LP was almost immediately referenced by designer Peter Saville in his sleeves for Joy Division and later New Order on Manchester's Factory Records. The album has continued to grow in stature over the years with the NME recently commenting: 'Synthesizing late-'70s English pop's two important strands - punk rock and the 'cold wave' electronics of Bowie's Low - the original Ultravox evoked an apocalyptic Eurocentric sci-fi world that veered between the hallucinatory and the monochrome... Systems Of Romance perfectly captures Foxx's doomed, visionary poetry in all its waiting-for-the-bombs-to-fall glory...
By this time Foxx was writing most of his lyrics through the perspective of a new Quiet Man alter ego: 'A long time ago I found a grey suit in an Oxfam shop in London', he explains. 'Over the next few weeks I began to think about who might have previously owned the suit and what kind of life he may have led. I got a few friends to wear the suit in various locations and rooms that I liked and took photographs and films of them, never showing their faces. I began to wear the suit and walk around London and other cities. It gave me a surprising amount of freedom. I attracted no attention at all. I found that I could go into a café or walk into a hotel without attracting a comment. If I sat in a corner long enough people would eventually cease to notice my existence altogether, so I could easily overhear conversations and observe all the small dramas that happen around us all the time. Here was a kind of invisibility and it was very exciting. The Quiet Man is still me, or rather still a part of me', he concludes.
Meanwhile in January 1980 Foxx emerged from the wreckage of Ultravox! (band member Billy Currie was on tour in Gary Numan's band at the time) with the stark, icy Metamatic, home to his most famous solo single 'Underpass' which he says was influenced by his love of dub reggae. 'The bassline on 'Underpass' is dub. Because a lot of the acts signed to Island Records were dub and reggae, I did meet Bob Marley and Lee Perry in the 70s and I was struck with how the music sounded like a living organism. Everyone in the studio sort of melted into it'.
“I deliberately don't define anything too closely, too fast, having learned years ago that's how you kill songs - they might sound OK, but they'll be inbred. You have to let other people walk them. Let them off the leash. See what they run off and mate with”
As Foxx recently recounted, his own work was mostly born out of long hours spent by himself. 'I lived alone in Finsbury Park, spent my spare time walking the disused train lines, cycled to the studio every day and wobbled back at dawn imagining I was the Marcel Duchamp of electro-pop. Metamatic was minimal, primitive techno-punk. Car crash music tailored by Burtons'. Metamatic's fusion of J. G. Ballard, Max Ernst and apocalyptic Japanese horror flicks made Foxx an unlikely chart contender yet he had his first taste of Top 20 success. More importantly it connected with an audience that included the likes of techno DJ Dave Clarke, John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers), the Junior Boys, Ladytron, Aphex Twin, Hollywood movie director Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot) and Detroit electro artists such as Juan Atkins and Carl Craig... Read more here.
My Face - Single Sided 7" Flexi-disc - Free with Smash Hits! Magazine (1980)
Film One - B-Side of 'Underpass' 7" (1980-VS 318)
This City - From 'No-One Driving' 2 x 7" (1980-VS 338)
Welcome to the fourth in a series of musical snap-shots, entitled: La Musique des Sons. Unable or unwilling to expand on the whys and what-fors of a particular artist/project, etc, two for one seemed like the way to go. Less is in no way more, but maybe less is enough.
Seemingly worlds apart, but do Shackleton and T.A.G.C. have more in common than first thought; Middle Eastern influences intertwine with hypnotic rhythms, producing meditative, ritualistic music? However, as is often the case, the similarities only serve to high-light the differences.
I first became aware of Sam Shackleton's work on the Mordant Music label: Stalker, I Want to Eat You, El Din, Pt. 1, etc. Like other interesting musicians in the modern music arena, Shackleton's work has been categorised as Dubstep (see his and Appleblim's (Laurie Osborne) work on their now defunct Skull Disco label). I've never known him to dispute this, but stylistically, we're now moving further and further away from the template. For the most part (relatively) slow rhythms, built from 'ethnic' percussion pads, weave in and out of Middle Eastern melodies, punctuated by nihilistic vocal samples (a reoccurring theme): "The Branch Is Weak". That said, from here-on-in, all bets are off...
Before, after and during Clock DVA, Adolphus (Adi) Newton further expanded his interests/ideas with The Anti Group, or TAG, or preferably T.A.G.C.; The Anti-Group Communications. In some ways T.A.G.C. combines early Jazz inspired Clock DVA material with the later electronic inspired Clock DVA material, but with more of an emphasis on ritualistic music and sonic experimentation, inspired by, amongst other things: "The expansion of Consciousness whether via applied use of computers and audio-visual technology or via arcane systems of Magick or other Occult or esoteric sciences". As infuriatingly inconsistent/infrequent as Newton's output has been, his ability to immerse himself in the subject at hand and present his findings is legendary. Each recording comes with copious sleeve notes, often in additional booklet form, detailing Newton's extensive research. For instance, in the same way that Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle's interest in W. S. Burroughs helped introduce the authors work to a new audience, Newton did much the same for many; Aleister Crowley, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Camus & Donatien Alphonse François (Marquis de Sade), to name but a few. Most of The Anti Group's back catalogue is criminally over-looked, therefore long out of print, and some of the CD re-releases/compilations, are poorly remastered, which is unfortunate. However, seek and ye shall find...
"The original idea for the Anti Group was devised by A. Newton & S.J. Turner as early as 1978, with the intention of the formation of a multi-dimensional research & development project active in many related areas. research and development of sound/film/video/performance and the documentation of each project was the fundamental “Modeus Operandi”. Underlining this basic idea lays the deeper philosophical and theoretical; The first non theoretical action devised by TAG was the Film “The delivery”, a 16mm tryptych projection and soundtrack , and the Anti theatre performance “The Discussion” designed for five tape recorders and multi-video projection systems. These two works were first presented at the “Der Doelen” center in Rotterdam on Sat. Sep 22nd, 1985. “The delivery” has been exhibited at the “2nd Atonal festival” in “The Ballhaus Tiergarten” Berlin, Feb 18th 1985 where the soundtrack was recorded on a mobile 24 track system. This document was released as the recording “The delivery” on Atonal Records. After these initial performances TAG concentrated on Audio development. it was during this period 1985-1987 that the above recordings were realized along with the highly acclaimed Ambisonic Album “Digitaria” which is a Technological and Ethnological work based on the ideas of the Sabean cults of ancient Khem and the Dogon tribe of Mali. Having worked through these areas, it became the next logical step to move into the application of Psychophysics developing the use of frequencies and Psychoacoustics with computer aided technology"
Ghost Cultures Under Collapse - Digitaria - Side Effects
