Inviting fans of alternative stories into a safe space, Bob Fischer (and friends) have not only created new stories for your pleasure, but also a new platform – Mulgrave audio.  Damian Robinson caught up with Bob to find out more about Mulgrave and their future releases.

You’re about to release the first material of your new project – Mulgrave audio.  Could you explain a little about Mulgrave Audio please?

Whenever I got together with my friends, Andrew Orton and Andrew T Smith, we ended up discussing strange old 1970s TV shows, weird bits of folklore and general spooky stuff. We’re all writers, and eventually, we started shaping these conversations into actual stories. So Mulgrave Audio is a company we’ve formed to release original audio drama for download, CD, vinyl, cassette… wax cylinder if we can get the parts. So far, everything we’ve got planned is infused with that sense of weirdness. And a bit of a retro aesthetic. So we’re hoping it might appeal to fans of Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel… all of those beautifully unsettling old TV shows.

Your first release, Simon Perkins’ lurgy, is out at the end of April, that must be exciting.  How excited are you for your first release?

Excited and terrified! I’m crossing fingers and toes that it goes down well.  

And just a word on Lurgy – perhaps you could summarise the story for us, and also explain why you wanted it to be the first release on Mulgrave.

It’s set in 1974, and it’s about a troubled teenage boy who is understandably disturbed when the daytime announcer on TV begins to initiate conversations with him. Is he losing his mind? Or could TV actually prove to be his salvation? We found a brilliant young Teesside actor, Ethan Warren, to play Simon. And an actual 1970s BBC continuity man, Roger Limb, to play the announcer! Roger later joined the Radiophonic Workshop and composed music for Doctor Who, but in the early 1970s he voiced the links between shows on BBC1 and BBC2, and he still has “the voice!” He was brilliant. Once all those elements started falling into place, it was an easy decision to make this our first release.

In terms of future releases, is there a particular genre you’re looking for with Mulgrave or a particular roster of artists you’re hoping to work with?

I think we’re all fascinated by stories in which the otherworldly somehow bleeds into the everyday. And we definitely have a hit list of favourite TV actors that we’d like to work with.  

In terms of the future, do you have more releases planned for 2023 and if so can you give us a quick preview?

Next up is a story written by Andrew Orton. Andrew is a huge fantasy fan – Tolkien, Game of Thrones, all that – and writes in that style with great finesse. I don’t want to say too much, but it’s a touching story and the fantasy elements are absolute poetry.  

How can we keep up with the activities of Mulgrave if we want to keep up to date with new relesases? 

The website is mulgraveaudio.co.uk, we’re @mulgraveaudio on Twitter, and also on facebook.com/mulgraveaudio