Commentary

Track 8 starts with an introduction to The Ketisons, with Tom’s Octopad running behind the commentary. It then crosses into a poem about the lesser qualities of family life, and finally resolves into Ketamine Suns, a ballad, with a melodium running through the verses. This was Grant Showbiz’s idea – it’s an amazing instrument, a keyboard, with these huge tape loops of choirs. This is another of my personal favourites.

Julia Nagle, preview commentary on some of the tracks from the forthcoming album The Unutterable. Source: The Fall Online: The Unutterable promo page (2020)

“Octo Realm” is a studio skit which was paired, for obvious reasons, with “Ketamine Sun” as a single track on The Unutterable (2000). I’m giving it separate treatment here, in a dramatic break with the precedent set by annotatedfall.doomby.com, but in line with The Track Record.

The identities of the speakers in the opening section are identified in the footnotes. The information originally came from the article on “Ketamine Sun” at Reformation! Post TPM – the predecessor site to The Track Record – which thanks Julia (presumably Nagle) and Chris for their assistance. The Track Record, at the time of writing, does not reproduce the full article, but it is available in the Internet Archive (see Sources/Links).

Footnotes

1. Spoken by Grant Showbiz. ↩︎
2. Spoken by the secretary of the recording studio. ↩︎
3. Rob Ayling of Voiceprint. ↩︎
4. Grant Showbiz again.
   
   According to the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, ketamine is a “synthetic drug that is commonly used in medical and veterinary practice. It is known as disassociative anaesthetic and is also used as a analgesic.” Recreational use had always existed, but took off in the 1990s, associated with the rave scene. The drugs information site Talk to Frank says that its effects on the user include make you feel dream-like, detached, relaxed and happy, but also potentially confused and nauseous. It can have hallucinatory effects. Taking too much can lead the user down a “k hole”, involving an inability to move and a feeling of the separation of mind and body which may be unsettling or scary. Ketamine goes under various other names, including “Special K” and “Vitamine K”. ↩︎
5. Julia Nagle (now Julia Adamson). ↩︎
6. Mark E. Smith. ↩︎
7. The sound engineer. ↩︎
8. Julia Nagle again. ↩︎
9. The idea seems to be that the characters previously introduced are part of a new TV series. ↩︎
10. “Pen” = penitentiary (i.e. prison. “Penitentiary” is not much used in British English). An “electromorph”, according to Wiktionary, is a mutant form of a protein. ↩︎
11. “Sons of Temperance”, also on The Unutterable, contains the phrase, “androgynous piece of slop.” ↩︎
12. In some regional variations of British English, “tea” can mean an evening meal – the equivalent of dinner – as well as the hot drink (i.e. “high tea”, rather than “afternoon tea”. Some people insist that “dinner” is the main meal of the day, whether it happens at lunchtime or teatime. It all gets very confusing.) ↩︎
13. A “stool pigeon” is a police informant, criminal look-out, or decoy for either party. It carries a sense of betrayl: self-sacrificing, exploited or unwilling. The phrase’s origins are often said to lie in a hunting practice of tying a bird down in order to attract the attention of other birds, which can then be shot or captured. Phrase Finder, however (see Sources/Links), casts well-researched doubt on this theory. Stool pigeons can also be found in the lyrics to “Guest Informant”. ↩︎
14. The Adidas footwear is evidently of such inferior quality that frequent repairs are necessary. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Octo Realm/Ketamine Sun” [Archived]
• Phrase Finder: Stool Pigeon
• Reformation! Post-TPM: Ketamine Sun
• The Fall Online: The Unutterable promo page (2020) [archive]
• Talk to Frank: Ketamine
• The Track Record: “Octo Realm”
• United Kingdom, Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Research and Analysis: Ketamine
• Wiktionary: electromorph
• Wikipedia: Ketamine