Inner Space

I've been meaning to write something up on this wonderful documentary series for a while but it's taken myself and the family a couple of weeks to watch all thirteen episodes of this legendary Australian cult television show. Filmed in 1973 by sub aquatic explorers Ron and Val Taylor, the series finely balances factual documentary with dramatic oceanographic adventure, capturing an innocence and sense of playful wonder rarely seen on cinematic screen nowadays. It's compulsive viewing, a strange combination of aquatic sensuality, sublime cinematography, factual science, drama and of course the charming relationship of husband and wife team Ron and Val. As a youngster I remember my teenage brain being submerged by similiar documentaries, endless Film Board Of Canada documentaries on the deep sea with strange electronic scores, rainy Sunday afternoons transfixed by the underwater acrobatics of Frenchman Jacques Cousteau or watching from behind the sofa the subaqueous celluloid terror of Bruno Vailati's 'Jaws' cash-in films. Exotic televisual treats such as these, often but not always fueled by the success of 'Jaws', offered a form of escapism from the daily grim realities of growing up in the industrial belt of Scotland. These were other worlds, uncanny, hauntingly beautiful and sometimes fearful. 'Inner Space' is a delight to watch from start to finish and beautifully illustrates the extraordinary hypnotic power of underwater filmmaking. Episode 9,in particular, is a terrifying edge of the seat masterpiece of monstrous mondo exploitative film making. Steven Spielberg was apparently so impressed with this particular episode that he consequently changed his script to allow inclusion in the film 'Jaws'. 'Inner Space' is a cinematic wonder, charting strange, undiscovered waters and perhaps the only film I know of which features a charming aquadelic jazz soundtrack, man eating sharks and a William Shatner narration. An unclassifiable gem. Seek out.

Inner Space is out now on DVD on Votary Records. 

Once Around The Sun

Here’s another wonderful cultural artefact I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. ‘Once Around The Sun’ is a strange and visionary soundtrack to a forgotten Australian post Woodstock counter culture film. Filmed by sculptor and experimental filmmaker Gordon Mutch, a well known figure in the late sixties Sydney underground,the film set out to document the Australian freakout fraternities first foray into mass open-air festival. As far as I know, the film never made it off the cutting room floor which is a shame as the resultant soundtrack by John Sangster is masterpiece of beautifully restrained pastoral instrumentation and deep, dark, passages of hallucinatory orchestration. This is no cheap soundtrack of low budget psych exploitation but a fully formed cosmic suite of ambitious proportions. Cosmic tones of avant free form improvisation,jazz noir and interstellar big band swing collide. Imagine Stockhausen conducting the Arkestra and your halfway there. At times, the music is strangely propulsive, as strolling basslines percolate up through the deliriously shimmering dissonance and reverb saturated discordance. There are also oddly expansive, staring at the sun moments of peaked outsiderness as home made percussion, tabla, electronics and sitar echo and reverberate in the noon day breeze. Another fine archaeological resurrection by the stellar Australian label Roundtable.