Way Of The Morris

More good news! My favourite purveyor of esoteric soundtrack recordings, Jonny Trunk, has started a new label called OST with the sole aim of releasing some of the more interesting proponents of contemporary film music out there. The first release on this new label is Adrian Corker's original soundtrack for Tim Plester's award winning documentary about the much ridiculed tradition of Morris dancing entitled “Way Of The Morris”. The film is a charming meditation on the curious role of folk traditions with contemporaneous culture and despite this rather oblique subject matter, the soundtrack is a wondrous mix of restrained electronics and ancient instrumentation and very much worthy of your attention. Utilizing field recordings from rural England, the music documents a strange and wonderful meeting place, where the sound of bells and whistles, voice and tradition, sticks and rushes blur and decay into a radiophonic otherworldliness. It is a weird mix indeed as shimmering glacial electronics elide into eccentric Moondog rhythmic patterns, joyous Bacchanalian reverie eerily echoes then dissolves into playful folk melody to suddenly side step into deeply meditative and cavernous melancholic disquiet creating an intoxicating amalgam of rural sounds. Compositionally, the soundtrack is both rich and emotive in tenor and style and wonderfully captures many of the contradictions of the preserving village green tradition within an industrial society. An utterly charming, idiosyncratic and very worthwhile release.

The "Way Of The Morris" soundtrack is released on OST on November 21st.

Anworth Kirk

Strange things have been coming through my letterbox of late.  This morning, I received a whole batch of mail related to the blog, a recording of sub aquatic exotica by Dolphins Into The Future, a book on rubber fetish wear and a collection of films made by the artist John Latham.  Also amongst the mail, was an anonymous parcel with scant information as to the identity of the sender.  Slightly anxious that I was being stalked, I set about finding out who had sent it.  It took a while, but eventually, after a little research, I twigged who was responsible. This particular package contained a record, and a very interesting one at that.  At times, the recording sounds like a soundtrack, albeit of the vaguely oddball and twisted kind.  It's a strange mixture of spectral electronics and cunning folk musique concrete.  The disc is immersed in an ill distempered paganism with shimmering moments of intense haunting fragility. The record graphics impart very little information apart from a photograph of Anworth Kirk (a location used in the The Wicker Man film) and a page of a book (which I think relates to the Pendle witchcraft trial of 1612) which was glued onto the back of the hand stitched cover.  I found the music contained spellbinding and for those who enjoyed the recent Broadcast and Focus Group collaboration, they will find much to love about this record. As to when it's actually released, I'll keep you posted.

Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Tokyo Sonata" is a filmic masterpiece of unsettling domestic tension. The premise of the plot revolves around a family's impending financial ruin after a middle-aged company man is abruptly fired from his well-heeled Tokyo job. Every morning he leaves the house dressed in his coat and tie, and spends his days roaming the urban environment [which typically in Tokyo indicates 4,000 inhabitants per square kilometre] in search of work, leaving his family unaware of their socio economic plight. The film’s tone is typified by the wonderfully eerie and pastoral score by Kazumasa Hashimoto.  The score contains a few tracks which typify what only can be described as ghostly electronic folk music.  Here is a "Unten Take 1" but I recommend you seek out the entire score as soon as possible.  Another wonderful Jonny Trunk tip!

Museum Of Witchcraft, Boscastle

The Museum Of Witchcraft in Boscastle houses the world's largest collection of artifacts devoted to witchcraft in all its forms. It's a fascinating collection and I could have spent many more hours reading and looking at the vast range of material available.  The museum has a very open curatorial approach, mixing both the sacred and the profane, the highbrow with the lowbrow.  I was particularly intrigued by the poppets on display as I'd recently read both "The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud and the catalogue of Mike Kelley's show of the same name.  I'm currently enjoying "A History of the Pendle Witches and Their Magic: Wicked Enchantments" by Joyce Froome and the wonderful collection of "Songs Of Witchcraft And Magic From The British Folk Tradition" which I came across in the museum's shop.