Darran Anderson

Inspired by the surreal accounts of the explorer Marco Polo, Imaginary Cities charts the metropolis and the imagination, and the symbiosis therein. A work of creative non-fiction, the book roams through space, time and possibility, mapping cities of sound, melancholia and the afterlife, where time runs backwards or which float among the clouds. In doing so, Imaginary Cities seeks to move beyond the clichs of psychogeography and hauntology, to not simply revisit the urban past, or our relationship with it, but to invade and reinvent it.

Imaginary Cities

A lyrical memoir and family history told through four generations of fathers and sons in Northern Ireland A smuggler and a deserter, Darran Anderson’s grandfather skirted the Second World War on the fringes of legality. Anderson’s father survived the height of the political violence in Northern Ireland, and Anderson came of age during the final years of the Troubles. As a young man fighting for direction in a country upended by years of civil war, Anderson found himself lost in the midst of hedonism, division, and isolation. To find a way to exist in the world, he felt compelled to leave his home town of Derry, Ireland. But the mysterious disappearance of Anderson’s cousin forces him back to his city, and, in turn, its history. Searching, in the present day, for his cousin’s body along the Foyle River, Anderson examines how his grandparents lost their lives in the same river. As he continues to search, his father and uncle by his side, Anderson uncovers tales and mythologies in the surroundings, forgotten writings, anecdotes, and accounts, piecing together these lives as he moves down the river. Through a private microcosm, the fate of an entire city (and a larger story about Ireland) is sensitively and cinematically told. Exploring a landscape that changes with the river from nautical to urban to rural, and replete with stories of heartache, revolution, and redemption, Inventory is a gripping and moving affirmation of how we can emerge from tragedy with renewed hope and a deeper awareness of who we are.

A Memoir

Inventory

Tesla's Ghost

A Hubristic Flea

Tidewrack

Outside his native France, the view of Serge Gainsbourg was once of a one-hit wonder lothario. This has been slowly replaced by an awareness of how talented and innovative a songwriter he was. Gainsbourg was an eclectic, protean figure; a Dadaist, poète maudit, Pop-Artist, libertine and anti-hero. An icon and iconoclast. His masterpiece is arguably Histoire de Melody Nelson, an album suite combining many of his signature themes; sex, taboo, provocation, humour, exoticism and ultimately tragedy. Composed and arranged with the great Jean-Claude Vannier, its score of lush cinematic strings and proto-hip hop beats, combined with Serge's spoken-word poetry, has become remarkably influential across a vast musical spectrum; inspiring soundtracks, indie groups and electronic artists. In recent years, the album's reputation has grown from cult status to that of a modern classic with the likes of Beck, Portishead, Mike Patton, Air and Pulp paying tribute. How did the son of Jewish Russian immigrants, hounded during the Nazi Occupation, rise to such notoriety and acclaim, being celebrated by President François Mitterand as "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire"? How did the early chanson singer evolve into a musical visionary incorporating samples, breakbeats and dub into his music, decades ahead of the curve? And what are the roots and legacy of a concept album about a Rolls Royce, a red-haired Lolita muse, otherworldly mansions, plane crashes and Cargo Cults?

Darran Anderson

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