Night Gallery is Adam Griffin and Aaron ‘Gatekeeper‘ David who together quietly released the album we’d hoped Silver Columns were going to, back in August. But it was late last year that their unnervingly catchy synth-pop track Mary Bell toured the blog circuit just prior to the Cold Wave tsunami breaking over internet-land.

Mary Bell was a 10 year old girl from Newcastle who was convicted of the sadistic murders of two toddlers in 1968. She spent the next twelve years in prison before being released in 1980. She had a daughter who was born in 1984 and who was unaware of her mother’s past until reports tracked down Mary Bell to South Norwood. In 2003, just before her daughter’s 18th birthday she went to court to permanently secure her daughter’s and her own anonymity. She succeeded.

Valis are from Chicago and they’re awesome.

The addition of a thumping Freestyle floor tom and snare track transforms Night Gallery’s original – Wendy Carlos vía some huge Sister Feelings Calls era Simple Minds.  An uptick in tempo, an arpegiated synth running in the background and this is shifted from the source material’s meditation on innocence into a mist wrapped slice of horror.  It’s left to a sweet, disarmingly direct vocal to suggest the children at the centre of the song while Valis inserts a snippet of documentary sound to complicate the shift into something more suited for dancefloors.

Night Gallery – Mary Bell (VALIS Remix)

Not sure there are any plans to release this but Night Gallery’s excellent debut (where you can hear the original, Mary Bell) is out on Rainbow Body Records.

A bit of advance notice for the readers of this blog that reside in Brighton: our lords and masters return to our seaside town as it descends into winter.  Come see them and you get see us dragged from our cellars and thrust in front of the bemused hordes.  This is next Friday.