Thursday, June 12, 2008
Music for Experimental Film with Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip
Tom Verlaine's guitar sound is unique and can evoke mysterious. His band Television is one of those bands that those who know them are passionate and nostalgic about, but most folks have never heard of them. They released two late seventies albums which featured somewhat strained and passionate vocals by Verlaine, which I am sure turned off many first time listeners, who also might have missed the tight rhythm section as well as the intricate, interactive, and dynamic guitar work of Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. Lloyd has stepped away from the third occasional reconstitution of the group and is replaced by Jimmy Rip, Verlaine's partner for this project, Music for Experimental Film.
Rip and Verlaine provide the score for seven avant garde experimental shorts from the 1920s. There is surprisingly little aquarium guitar noodling here. They are able to create a mood that is appropriate for each of the films. According to the Kino website, only one of the soundtracks was recorded in the studio, the rest were captured when the duo presented this program in concert over the past couple of years.
Le'Etoile de Mer a 1926 film by Man Ray is the opener. And it is a combination of what we now can recognize as an almost categorical collection of surrealism with an emphassis on eroticism. Much of the film is shot through what looks like shower glass. It also features what appears to be an obsession with starfishes. The guitar work is a bit loopier here to my ears than some of the other pieces but it makes it more accessible to additional viewings as well.
James S. Watson and Melville Webber's The Fall of the House of Usher from 1928 and The Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra from Robert Florey are the two films that come close to maintaining some sort of narrative. They were my least favorite of the films, but the expressionism, especially in Usher, makes a nice contrast to some of the looser collection of images featured in the more surrealist or
Dadist offerings. The music for these two seems to propel the images along more than comment and reflect on them, such as with the lovely theme featured in the latter part of Le'Etoile de Mer.
Man Ray's Emak Bakia (1926) to me clearly shows how experimental images are not simply accidental ones. Emak truly is a visual poem with many images of litht and shadow. Also, If Le'Etoile de Mer obsessed over star fish. This film features the human eye as a routine feature, but thankfully non are sliced like in that other surrealist masterpiece of the time, Un Chien Andalu. But it does recall some of the rough and tumble action and motion of Rene Clair's Ent'racte, which was made a couple of years earlier. It also takes us into surf and some images of sexual gender bending. And its latter third is a lot of circling images of shadow and light.
Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 plays with square shapes and objects that merge, recede and advance. The feel to the music on this one is light and almost meditative.
Brumus D'Automne (1929) by Dimitri Kirsanoff is a piece of visual poetry exploring the internal moods of a woman who has just received walking papers from her lover (at least that is my interpretation) It builds visual motifs of rain and scenic exteriors.
The last selection is Ballet Mechanique by Fernard Leger. It is the most upbeat of the group and probably contains the most images. Images reverse, are optically printed over each other and meet the beat to the music in a kind of fun house ride.
I think it is quite cool that a New Wave guitar god will help allow folks to discover the vintage experimental films of Man Ray, Fernard Legar, and the others. I invite you to check out the trailer from Kino the collection's distributor.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 PM
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