After Dark is a members only alternative music club located in a converted nunnery just west of Ravenscar, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, England.

The club is the only dedicated venue to Doom Jazz in the UK.

Dark jazz is characterized by the fusion of down-tempo, minimalist ambient music with jazz. The term is often used interchangeably with doom jazz and is comparable in feel and mood to dark ambient music.

 The dark atmosphere of this genre is inspired by Film noir soundtracks, in particular Ascenseur pour l'échafaud by Miles Davis and the work of Angelo Badalamenti, as well as being influenced by dark ambient music associated with the Cold Meat Industry record label. The style would be built on in the 1990s and beyond by acts like Bohren & der Club of Gore and The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble.

In a private archival collection of autochromes is depicted the members, rituals, dances and celebrations of the largest and most notorious witch cult in all of Europe. Once located in the now abandoned and lost village of Wormwood, in the Forge Valley near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, were gathered 13 families who for generations had practised their pagan cult away from the eyes of church and state. The village, surrounded by dense woodland, had no connecting roads and was accessible only on foot along a trail from the Derwent River somewhere between East Ayton and Hackness.

The cult’s longevity and notoriety came to light when a pedlar woman called Mother Blizzard was accused of the murder of John Barwick by witchcraft in 1919. Locals revealed that she resided in the Forge Valley and upon investigation by magistrates and police the village of Wormwood was discovered on October 27th of that year.

The village was preparing for a dark and bloody festival and much food was gathered and many animals hung and slaughtered. A huge bonfire had been erected and an alter laid out before it, upon which much esoteric and occult items were gathered. In the many hovels were discovered naked men and women conjoined with animals and hellish beasts, all in a state of ritualistic fervour and copulation. Young girls and boys danced naked through the woods and phantom shapes were seen drifting like smoke between the ramshackle huts and store rooms. Attached to all the major trees in the vicinity were the corpses of presumed ancestors recently dug up and tied there ready for the infernal celebration. The investigating officials were so alarmed that they fled in terror, secretly vowing to return with armed soldiers recently returned from the battlefields of Europe.

It is believed that some of the local soldiers enlisted to aid in the arrests and investigation of the Wormwood cult were in fact from that cursed village. On October 31st all members of the cult, the corpses of some 400 bodies, several enlisted soldiers and Mother Blizzard - previously arrested and held in Scarborough Castle - all mysteriously disappeared.

Many autochromes, dating from the war years, were discovered apparently depicting village life and the secret horrors born out of arcane rituals and practises. Most alarming of all was one picture depicting a parade of witches through East Ayton, implicating many in that village of colluding, protecting and possibly practising the illegal cult of witchcraft.

Rumours suggest that the cult re-surfaced under the guise of a travelling carnival in the United States of America calling themselves the “Carnivale du Freake”.

For further information see ‘The History Of Witchcraft’ by Montague Summers, 1926.

Reference material provided by my generous friends William Harrison and Harry Ainsworth, the British Library and Library of Congress.

Each doodle was created digitally using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Elements, Corel Paintshop Pro, DeepDream Generator and Filterforge.

Surreal and abstract experiments with shape, form and shades whilst under the influence of nightmare inducing Mushberries.

 The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture. The accident destroyed the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and several further deaths later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Another person is reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosis. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was originally diagnosed in 237 people on-site and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed in 134 cases. Of these, 28 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more workers subsequently died between 1987 and 2004, but their deaths cannot necessarily be attributed to radiation exposure. Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects although a significant, but uncertain, fraction of the thyroid cancers diagnosed since the accident in patients who were children at the time are likely to be due to intake of radioactive iodine fallout. Furthermore, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees. The Chernobyl disaster was a unique event and the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurred. The design of the reactor is unique and in that respect the accident is thus of little relevance to the rest of the nuclear industry outside the then Eastern Bloc. However, it led to major changes in safety culture and in industry cooperation, particularly between East and West before the end of the Soviet Union. Former President Gorbachev said that the Chernobyl accident was a more important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union than Perestroika – his program of liberal reform.

Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident, but resettlement of areas from which people were relocated is ongoing.

Reference material provided by the generous duo William Harrison and Harry Ainsworth.

Each doodle was created digitally using Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paintshop Pro, and Filterforge.