Sunday 22 February 2015

Mica Levi

Under The Skin (2014) ...

Soundtrack to one of the very best movies of 2014, Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin ...

Love ...


 That hovering dust-cloud of strings, which Levi referred to as "like a beehive" in her and Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer's recent Pitchfork interview, pops up repeatedly throughout the score with minor additions and tweaks representing the journey of Johansson's character: in "Meat to Maths", there are clanging bell-like sounds behind it, while in "Mirror to Vortex" it's half-submerged in the amplified sound of its own echo. In the context of the film, these additions feel like the messiness of lived experience muddying Johansson's template, the imprint of the lives she begins to grapple with as her time on Earth extends. The hollow knock of a single drum, like a single dragging foot, is another repeating theme, giving the score a reiterative, hesitant quality. Inasmuch as you can be invited into Johansson's character's head in Under the Skin, the music does the heavy lifting. The score has the feel of a thought process, albeit one conducted by a being you have no genetic relation to.  pitchfork.com ...



Lipstick to Void ...



Drift ...
 

BFI meets Mica Levi ...



Loving the alien ...

Monday 9 February 2015

Hydra's Dream

The Little Match Girl (2014) ...

Dreampop from Swedish duo Anna von Hausswolff and Matti Bye...

The Joys of a New Year ... 



  The sound of The Little Match Girl boasts both the group’s firm grasp on the classical composing of music and a duo who wants to push “music” beyond any category in which it is currently comfortable. The title track is their sonic reimagining of the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale of finding hope only in death and the rest of the album is equally high-minded, telling a profoundly existential, and often somber, tale with each of the 9 tracks.  But while each track stands alone as a concise narrative, when strung together, as an album they would seem to serve as a broader commentary on a single theme, much like Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen.  And like Paris Spleen, that theme would seem to be the beauty that can be found in the wretchedness of the world by those who best understand the circumstances of humanity... philthymag ...



Hypothermia ... 

Saturday 7 February 2015

AC Marias

One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing (1988) ...

Angela Conway and Bruce Gilbert of Wire in cool indie experimental mode ...

One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing ... 




Just talk (live on Tony Wilson's Other Side of Midnight)...



Just Talk ... 


  
Time Was (Canned Heat) featuring Bruce Gilbert, Barry Adamson and Rowland S Howard ...



To Sleep ... 

'To Sleep’ is just a beautiful song, a carefully-crafted piece of moving electronica and euphoric guitar drifts which is mesmerising; it’s a suitably pastoral accompaniment to Conway’s poetry, which comes and goes like waves onto the shore. Entrancing and enchanting – you get the idea. ‘Looks Like’ is delivered in warped waltz time and, with its simple melodic synth pad swells could be a Vince Clarke composition were it not for the occasional intrusion of rippling guitar sounds. ‘Sometime’ is dark and edgy, a throbbing bass pulse and a ratchety sound culled straight from Wire’s ‘Advantage In Height’ offset by a pleasant strummed melody and a divine layered chorus of Conway’s voice(s). ‘One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing’, released as a single, concludes the cassette and vinyl editions, while the CD includes the warped cover of Canned Heat’s ‘Time Was’, also released as a single... Documentary Road ...

also
The Whispered Year (Touch Meridians 1 cassette, 1983) ... 


 

Friday 6 February 2015

Spell

Seasons In the Sun (1994) ...

Dark pop from Strawberry Switchblade's Rose McDowall and Boyd Rice, paying tribute to the tragic side of Sixties and Seventies pop ...

Terry ... 



Seasons In The Sun ... 



Stone Is Very Very Cold ...