I originally included this Cell 4 photo with my latest Pyestock set below but I prefer it on its own.  Très noir.  Did you know Nosferatu is public domain, a free download? Excellent music, not sure who by. 

Inside Cell 4 - from the Plenum Chamber along the pipes to the Exhaust Heat Diffuser.

It's a very well known shot of Pyestock this one, but we didn't stumble across the area it's in until the third visit - we'd always gone round the other way.  All the thrill seeing one of those world famous icons in the flesh for the first time, but unlike most of them, which grow large in the mind's eye and then turn out to be just tiny in real life - the Mona Lisa, the Laughing Cavalier, the White House, Mick Jagger - it was much bigger than I'd expected.  Huge, it is - that's me on the right.  Not the world's crispest photo, but it was taken before dawn so long exposure, post processing galore yadda yadda.

I've been to Pyestock many times, always with a camera.  I thought I'd start an occasional series of photos of this remarkable place.

Here's Cell 4, looking down on the enormous turbine test equipment and pipes, used famously to test Concorde's engines in the 60's.  This was the first visit, and we really didn't know how to get into the buildings - we had to climb up high and found a door that had been removed.  This photo means a lot to me - what a beautiful, astonishing sight to greet your first entrance.  We were so excited.  The atmosphere inside was magical - there was a blackbird singing on its own just before first light (heard on the audio player above the pic) and occasional clattering from the structure of the building itself.  It was very dark - this photo is a 30 second exposure.  We stayed up here for a whispered 10 minutes, wondering if we were alone, before working our way down and through.


Isn't it remarkable how quickly even a small degree of familiarity changes your perspective.  Nowadays I'd be quite happy to go into Pyestock in a hi-vis jacket playing a pair of marching cymbals, but there's nothing like the first time.  When this picture was taken it was so new and breath-takingly exciting - crouched on a high gantry, wondering what was below, with the metallic echos of the first bird of the dawn chorus ringing around this sleeping giant.

First, the American way of getting over a barbed wire fence.  I love this video - Hard Men You Wouldn't Want To Mess With, Carrying Guns.  With a Soundtrack that Delivers, hell yeah.  With what is, let's face it, a really crap solution to getting over a fence.  Especially it you've got wire cutters and you're going to use them.

Now the English way.  Let's say you've got a barbed wire overhang, and you're not Special Forces with boltcutters and submachine guns.  Here we go.

If you wanted to try this for yourself, and let's face it who wouldn't:  Make a 12ft rope ladder by cutting up 1ft sections of broom handle tied together as rungs, attached to a 20ft long rope extension with a weight on it.  Throw rubber sheeting over the barbed wire immediately to the side of the fence posts - the wire will bow less there.  Throw the weight attached to the extension rope right over the fence and the rubber sheeting so it'll slide, and here's the clever bit - once the weight has landed pull back on the rope so that the weight lifts off the ground, and swings back to the touch the other side of the fence.  You can then ease the extension rope back through to your side at the bottom, and then by pulling on the extension rope (now poking through to your side) you can pull the rope ladder up to and a bit over the rubber matting.  When it's the right height, clip off the extension rope to one of the links at the bottom to keep it all firm, and you're up and over.  Piece of cake.  It's quicker to do than it is to read.  Now where's my Blue Peter badge?

This is a staged shot, using actors.  The opinions above are not in any way designed to help people break the law.  Mea Non Culpa. See The Pirate Bay, Limewire et al.

Not many people have seen Rockfeedback's film of the Blacksand performance at Pyestock, so I thought I'd post it here.  Pyestock is an enormous place, a largely closed industrial testing facility.  We played in Cell 4, where they tested Concorde's engines in the 60's - running them at full power inside the building.  You can only imagine the noise.

They're very good people, Rockfeedback, up for it.  It was destined for Channel 4, but once the C4 lawyers saw it they pulled the plug on the broadcast.  Disappointing - it's not like we were advocating violence against minors. MTV2 did run it though, good on 'em.  

The words "at 12 minutes it was too long to put on Youtube" seem so limp, but I know if it had been a couple of minutes shorter we'd have sorted spreading this film around much earlier.