Music GLASGOW MUSIC AND FILM FESTIVAL SOUNDTRACK COMPOSER TRIBUTE MONDO MORRICONE The Arches, Glasgow, Sat 26 Feb
Ennio Morricone is an undisputed colossus of the movie soundtrack. For Mondo Morricone, David Scott and Duglas T Stewart, of Pearlfishers and BMX Bandits fame, have rounded up a crack team of Scottish pop and jazz players to pay homage to their hero. ‘I think we’ll be covering a whole lot of aspects of Morricone’s work,’ says Duglas (pictured, above), ‘from the well known Western scores, to groovy scores, to Italian thrillers and sex comedies, but also some of the less well known songs’. David is particularly fond of those scores ‘where he combines unusual instruments with voices doing strange things, and always those beautiful melodies’.
Duglas owes his love of Morricone to an appearance by the actor Todd Carty (Grange Hill, Eastenders) on Noel Edmond’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. ‘Some kid phoned in and asked Carty what his favorite music was and he said Ennio Morricone. The kid was confused, Noel Edmonds was confused and I was intrigued. I went to Bellshill library and found a Morricone compilation. I’d never heard anything like it and it changed my life’.
A great soundtrack, they feel, doesn’t necessarily have to stand on its own. ‘It is a component part of a bigger thing,’ says Duglas. ‘Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho is one of the greatest movie scores ever but I don’t enjoy listening to it particularly as a separate listening experience. However, there are Morricone scores that I love from movies that I’ve never seen and brilliant scores for not very good movies.’
‘For me the big thing is melody,’ adds David, ‘the melody can act like another character.’ (Stewart Smith)
MODERN SOUNDTRACK FAUST WITH ALEX SMOKE Glasgow Film Theatre, Fri 18 Feb
INTERACTIVE EXPERIMENT LUCKY DRAGONS: NO BOUNDARIES, NO HIERARCHIES Glasgow Arches, Tues 22 Feb
Fans of audience participation are in for a rare treat at Glasgow promoters Cry Parrot’s contribution to the Glasgow Music and Film Festival. Opening the show, Edinburgh’s Wounded Knee has invited audience members to take part in Tones of the Universe, a one- off collaborative choir (‘no mics and no PA necessary’) of improvised vocalisations. The choir will be open to all and the idea, luckily for those of us for whom karaoke is a waking nightmare, is to enjoy the experience of singing rather than show off your vocal dexterity. For the main event, Cry Parrot have been gathering video contributions from members of the public, to be incorporated in an audio-visual show in which attendees will also be invited to participate. In their words, ‘You control the music. You control the film.’ Overseeing the musical aspect will be LA’s Lucky
Dragons (AKA Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara, above), who have made a name for themselves specialising in creating one-time-only performances that focus on audience involvement. Past interactive performances have involved music triggered and manipulated through skin contact between audience members, a process Luke describes as ‘building up a sort of third identity between audience and performer that’s really neither, but always both’. Timid types will be relieved by Luke’s assurance that
there’s no pressure to participate. ‘There’s an understanding between us that listening, in itself, is a very engaged way to participate,’ he says, admitting it might prove difficult to resist the array of toys Lucky Dragons are bringing to the party. ‘There’s a synthesiser that is played by touching one another on the skin, a synthesiser that is played by reflecting video light using CD-Rs, seed pod shakers, tuned gongs, a flute, some microphones, delays . . . sounds like fun, right?’ (Sean Welsh)
At 85 years old, director FW Murnau’s Faust remains one of the most visually arresting films in the history of world cinema. Murnau’s last German production divided contemporary audiences and lost a lot of studio money with its retelling of the 400-year-old fable when it was released in 1926. However, Faust’s stunning imagery and groundbreaking special effects have ensured the silent film has only gained in potency. Its lack of a soundtrack provided Glasgow’s Alex Smoke the perfect opportunity to ‘bring the film into the light of a new century’. Smoke, a musician/composer best known for minimal
techno (Soma, Hum+Haw), has short shrift for purists who would have the score reflect the performance practices of the 1920s. ‘That’s absolute bullshit, as far
62 THE LIST 17 Feb–3 Mar 2011
I’m concerned,’ he says. ‘Murnau was a massive risk- taker, a real pushing-at-the-envelope kind of guy and I think the idea of just slavishly sticking to the 1920s format is crazy, almost.’
Smoke’s new score meshes classical orchestration –
performed by the Scottish Ensemble – with sound design that subtly underscores the story’s modern relevance. The results are refreshingly apposite; the portentous, droning strings and electronic beats perfectly complementing the jittery, chiaroscuro images.
Nothing will be performed live, however – such is the complexity of the parts, it would be ‘technically impossible’. Regardless, Smoke prefers it to be a purely cinematic experience. ‘I didn’t want to make it gimmicky,’ he says. ‘I’d rather just have the music playing and people watching the film and forget about the other aspects and just enjoy it as a whole.’ (Sean Welsh)