Soundtrack Saturday

Brian Eno's soundtrack work is many decades old. A selection of tracks were compiled as a double vinyl/ CD in 2020, cunningly titled Brian Eno- Film Music 1976- 2020. One of the remarkable things about the album and its seventeen tracks is that it works as a whole and feels like a cohesive piece of work despite the music bookending it being separated by forty six years and spanning a wide variety of films and TV programmer, from the Apollo moonshot documentary For All Mankind to Top Boy, from an Arena documentary on Francis Bacon to the 1984 version of Dune, and Married To The Mob to a film about sharks, Natural World- Hammerhead. 

I've posted some of Eno's soundtrack music before- An Ending (Ascent) from For All Mankind, Deep Blue Day from Trainspotting, The Sombre from Top Boy and Prophecy from Dune have all featured here previously so thought I'd post some other tracks from Eno's film music, all of which is wonderful. 

Dover Beach is a four minute ambient excursion, a hum, a ringing drone, the sense of time passing and things changing. It's from the soundtrack to Jubilee, Derek Jarman's 1978 drama/ trip, a film that transplants 16th century occultist John Dee and Elizabeth I into 1970s Britain, a country decaying and shot through with anger, despair and nihilism. It's wildly impressionistic, largely plotless and infused with London punk. Everywhere looks like a World War II bombsite. Various punk figures star in the film- Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, Adam Ant, Jordan, Gene October and Toyah all appear and some of them are on the soundtrack too which concludes in ambient style with Slow Water and Dover Beach.  

Dover Beach

In 1995 Michael Mann directed a crime/ heist drama bringing together two giants of American cinema, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino for the first time. Eno contributed to the soundtrack, the very cinematic track Late Evening In Jersey, all long synth chords, a single guitar note, explosions echoing and rattling snare drums. 

Late Evening In Jersey

Eno recorded with U2 for the soundtrack too, appearing as Passengers, and Einsturzende Neubauten turned up as did New Order covering a Joy Division song, New Dawn Fades, with Moby. I'm not sure that was a collaboration anyone needed. 

Reasonable Question is from the 2021 soundtrack to the film We Are As Gods, a documentary about pioneering free thinker and environmentalist Stewart Brand. Brand was one of the Merry Pranksters on Ken Kesey's Magic Bus and an advocate of cyber- utopianism. Apparently he coined the phrase personal computer. He's now in his 80s and big on rewilding ecosystems. Reasonable Question sounds like a computer programme turned into music- that's not a criticism. 

Reasonable Question

Take Your Baby By The Hand

In 2022 Peak High released a single that was one the best of the year, the magnificent Was That All It Was, a cover of a 1979 disco/ soul song by Jean Carne. Peak High (Jim McCall) then sent his version to Sean Johnston who remixed it twice, the first time pulling all the ALFOS/ Patrick Cowley levers, synths and drum machines set for the cosmic disco/ chug heart of the sun, the second going early 90s Sheffield bleep house. Now they've done it again.

The new release is a cover of Wang Chung's 1983 hit Dance Hall Days, a song for summer and late nights, the sequencers and synths throbbing and pulsing. Don Gomez's sweet vocal sends the song closer to perfection. All the labels apply- cosmic disco, Italo, Balearic, chug house. Once again Sean is on remix duties, his Hardway Bros remix toughening up the drums and sending it to a sweatier, darker place, most likely a basement. 

The Peak High and Hardway Bros versions are at Bandcamp. The video for the original song was directed by Derek Jarman, with some of the footage from Jarman's father's home movies. The toddler is Derek. 

Sean is back in his remix partnership with Duncan Gray as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton very shortly, the pair remixing the latest song from the Tici Taci label, a superb EP from Uj Pa Gaz, coming all the way from Tirana in Albania. The Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown remix of Roxy is a six minute dub version, bassline leading the way, very much Uptown. The original version of Roxy is a gorgeous, woozy slice of electronic music, laid back Adriatica. Also on the EP is The Cove, six slo mo minutes, percussion, chugging drums and a keening topline that pulls at the heartstrings. There's a clip of the remix of Roxy at Soundcloud  and one of Roxy here. More excellence from Tici Taci- the EP comes out on 31st July. 

Back in 2018 Uj Pa Gaz remixed Fujiya & Miyagi's brilliant ode to middle age and its attendant physical shortcomings, Extended Dance Mix. 

Extended Dance Mix (Uj Pa Gaz Remix)

While I'm here, can I remind you about Duncan Grey's full length album from earlier this year, Five Fathoms Full. It's twelve tracks of wall to wall supercharged ALFOS- style cosmic disco/ indie dance and hasn't been heard by nearly enough people. Find it here. 

Whistling In The Dark

There's an exhibition on at the Manchester City Art Gallery of the works of Derek Jarman, a wide ranging selection of paintings from his time at the Slade to his activist paintings on the 1980s and early 90s and some of his films. In one of the film booths there is a loop of various videos he made in the 1980s and 90s- the still amazing films he made for The Smiths (The Queen Is Dead, Panic, There Is A Light, Ask) which had the power to make me hear the group anew for the first time in ages. The pair of videos he made for the Pet Shop Boys were there as well- Rent and It's A Sin- plus videos he made for The Mighty Lemon Drops and Easterhouse. 

Easterhouse were formed in Stretford, just up the road from me, by singer Andrew Perry and guitarist Ivor Perry. Perry would later become embroiled in the messy ending of The Smiths when he was invited to play with the remaining members after Johnny Marr left. Perry wasn't much happy with the situation and according to Ivor neither was Morrissey. All this is besides the point of this post though which is that their 1986 single Whistling In The Dark sounded very good playing on a big screen and at some volume. In some ways they sounded (and looked) like the epitome of the mid- 80s indie guitar scene- trebly Telecasters, serious, political lyrics, signed to Rough Trade, quiffs and Levis 501s- but they served very well as a flashback to that time. 

Whistling In The Dark

Kentish

Do you want to see some of my holiday photos?

We were in Kent last week, staying on Romney Marsh. I've only ever travelled through Kent before en route to Dover but exploring it was fantastic. As a bonus the weather was good too. Just down the road is Dungeness, one of the bleakest and most beautiful places in the country. Plus it's got an enormous nuclear power station which adds to the drama along with the masses of shingle flats and a pair of lighthouses. This one, the older of the two, is open and you can climb to the top.

Dungeness is also home to a community of artists and bohemians who live in a scattered collection of wooden cottages, some converted railway carriages. This one, Prospect Cottage, was the home of Derek Jarman.

Kent's coastline is dotted with reminders of the past and it's relationship with France, only twenty-five miles away. During the Napoleonic wars a string of Martello towers were built, against the threat of invasion. This one is Martello tower number 24 and is situated in a car park next to a small amusement park.

From a later conflict and threat of invasion, this World War Two era pill box looks out over the marsh.

Right behind the site we were staying on are some sound mirrors. The listening ears were constructed in the late 1920s, a form of acoustic sound detection and early warning of approaching enemy aircraft. Within a few years they were superceded by radar. There are three at Romney; this thirty foot concrete dish next to a smaller one and a two hundred feet long curved concrete wall. They've been closed off to the public due to vandalism and damage, now marooned on a man made island in a nature reserve. There's a swing bridge for guided tour access (but not while we were there). 

Musically, Kent means Billy Childish to me. We didn't get to Chatham, it's north Kent not south. This song is from the second album he did with his wife Nurse Julie and Wolf Howard as The Chatham Singers, a blues-gospel thing.

The Good Times