TOP-14: Living soundtracks

At the 64th Berlin Film Festival now, the premiere of the restored version of the “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” Robert Wine under the new sound path for the organ, which was composed by the New York Guru, John Zorn, took place. On this occasion COLTA . RU remembered 14 exemplary examples of concert-cinopocations over the past 35 years.

1.

Philip Glass

Koyyaniskatsi, director Godfrey Regino, 1982

Fashion for combining film screenings with concerts arose back in the 1980s. Then the critics were surprised that for live performance by composer-minimalist Philip Glass Soundtrack to the Apocalyptic July Film of Godfri Reginio “Koyaaniskatsi”, sixth halls were filled. Why are the audience ready to pay $ 20 for a ticket for a concert, where musicians are hard to see? And how do the musicians themselves voluntarily agree to the role of peculiar tapers, humbly accompanying a large screen in the dark? The interest of the audience was based on the popularity of the soundtrack, released in 1983 as the album of Glass. It is curious that at first Philip Glass flatly refused Regino's proposal about cooperation, saying that he was not engaged in music for films. But Regino did not give up, dragged Glass into the anthology of the archival cinema of Jonas Mekas and showed him a piece of captured material - first with the accompaniment to ordinary electronic music, and then with the composition “ North Star » Glass himself. Glass looked at the result, agreed to work - and now for 30 years he has been fulfilling the soundtrack with his ensemble around the world.

2.

Goblin

"Suspiria", director Dario Argento, 1977

The Italian fore-rock group Goblin under the control of Claudio Simonetti produced ordinary albums that enjoyed moderate success. But she gained cult popularity thanks to the soundtracks for horror films - including the most terrible, according to some, the film of all time, “Suspiries” Dario Arjento. Argento excellently scares in “Suspiria”, including thanks to the intense, atmospheric music of Goblin -the infantile chime is replaced by almost black-metallic psalms, hysterical and majestic. Dario asked the group to compose music to the filming of the film - to listen to it on the set. Despite the fact that Goblin soundtracks were sold in millions of print runs, the group failed to put on capital on them due to constant internal disagreements. For 30 years, the group did not give concerts - and only in recent years he fully fulfilled the soundtrack to the "Suspiria" from the stage. However, their deadly waltzes and after 35 years attract new fans-including, for example, ex-frontain Pantera , Phil Anselmo, French electronic duet Justice and ... Russian synchronists .

3.

Pet Shop Boys

"Babblers Potemkin", director Sergei Eisenstein, 1925

In 2004, 25 thousand people gathered on Trafalgar Square to listen to how the British intelligent and ironic synth-poet, together with the Dresden Symphony Orchestra, voices a textbook masterpiece about the sailor of Vakulenchuk, killed for a plate of soup, and a bunta on the ship. The choice of revolutionary classics is not so strange-the Neil Tennant and Chris Low finally had the opportunity to “put Che Guevar and Debussy on a disco-bit,” which they worked purposefully since the 1980s. Pet Shop Boys talked about the fact that they had made proposals to arrange similar mass public views in Russia, Iran and China, but they received refusals everywhere. The irony was not considered, apparently.

4.

Zombie Zombie

"Babblers Potemkin", director Sergei Eisenstein, 1925

Another version of the sound row to the classic of silent cinema was made by the French duet of Cravator Crutegers Zombie Zombie , first specializing in the soundtracks to the horror (this is evident from their name). About the "battleship Potemkin" a lot is said and written, but it never occurred to anyone that this film could be "dance." Zombie Zombie squeezed the entire rhythm of Eisenstein's installation, and in the stage on the stairs they arranged a deadly whistle. The premiere and the concert took a tow in the port of Jersey.

5.

Tequilajazzz

"Stoke", director Sergei Eisenstein, 1925

Moscow survived the moderate boom of live soundtracks for films about 10 years ago. In the Museum of Cinema, eccentric Finns Cleaning Women with vacuum cleaners, dryers and other household appliances were voiced by Aelita Yakov Protazanov, Alexei Aigi with the 4'33 ensemble accompanied Boris Barneta’s house, and the British with the appropriate name Cinematic Orchestra gathered a full hall of a central house of an entrepreneur on a “man with a movie apparatus” Jigi Vertov. Around the same time, Alexander Nikolaevich Bashirov persuaded Evgeny Vladimirovich Fedorov to voice the “strike” by Sergei Eisenstein to open the festival “Pure Dreams”. Fedorov, who had not seen the film before, took up the matter thoroughly and supplied the revolutionary imperfection with a cheeky, muscular instrumental using industrial noise. In Moscow, Taper-Group Tequilajazzz performed a “strike” at the STIK festival in the Khanzhonkov house, and the joining turned out so successful that the group had a cinema concert in Germany and Finland and then released on DVD .

6.

Steve Severin.

"The Blood of the Poet", director Jean Cocteau, 1930

One of the founders of the Siouxsie & THE Punk Group Banshees is systematically engaged in writing music for silent films . In 1998, he began with the album “ Visions ” , the soundtrack for the only banned blasphemy of the film - “Dreams of Ecstasy” by Nigel Vingrouva. Banshees always gravitates for art glam David Bowie and Roxy Music with a very strong visual component, and their early records contain a lot of references to the movies - not to mention the fact that the name of the group is borrowed from the 1970 Crying Banshei film with Vincent Price. So the direction chosen by Severin does not surprise - like his selection of films with a well -traced Gothic line: the “vampire” of Dreyer, the “shell and priest” Genemen Dullak and “The Blood of the Poet” by Jean Cocteau.

7.

Tindersticks

Films Claire Denis

Famous British rock-melancholy Tindersticks has been closely working closely with the French director Claire Denis, forming a unique creative symbiosis. They alternate their own albums with soundtracks to her films - they wrote the music to seven of them. Three years ago, Tindersticks combined a special 70-minute program, mounting both meditative and brutal excerpts from Denis's Nenett and Boni films, “every day of trouble”, “Friday evening”, “Uninvited Guest”, “35 piles of Roma” and “White Material”.

8.

Mark Ribo

"Kid", director Charlie Chaplin, 1921

The avant-garde guitarist Mark Ribo, who plays from Free jazz to Cuban folklore, undertook to voice the “baby” four years ago, because he suddenly realized how modern the Cuplin film, causing smiles and tears, was looking at: “This is a modern story about a linotaic father, which fell into very difficult economic conditions.” Music for solo guitar to the “baby” turned out to be muffled, bewitching and thoughtful, without beloved riba atonalities or whimsical textures. In the same 2010, Ribot was released by Silent 's solo album Movies ” , which includes some of the compositions that are not used in the soundtracks, as well as music for films that exist only in the imagination of Mark.

9.

Flying Lotus

"Magic of Heaven and Earth", director Harry Smith, 1962

In 2010, the electronic producer Flying Lotus voiced the animated collage of the legend of the post -war American bohemia Harry Smith, saturated with mythological connotations. While working on the film, Smith slept for no more than two hours a day, and then, with the help of advanced technology of the middle of the 20th century, called "Application" tried to recreate dreams in the film. The initial version of "Magic" lasted seven hours, the final one - a little more than an hour . Flying Lotus , armed with labor tools of the 21st century-a laptop, a dram-machine and a synthesizer, bombards the viewer with samples overlapping on each other and weaves primitive patterns from bits and lups. The grandson nephew of the Free Dzhazovaya diva Alice Coltrain is not the only musicians who voiced Smith's experimental animation: Deerhoof , Dj did the same before him. Spooky and Philip Glass.

10.

A HAWK and HACKSAW

"Shadows of forgotten ancestors", director Sergei Parajanov, 1964

The duet of Jeremy Barnes and Hiser Trost from the American city Albuquerque established himself with music saturated with the traditions of East European folklore. The film of the Paria of Soviet cinema Sergei Parajanov “Shadows of Forgotten ancestors” about the strength of pagan and Christian rituals Barnes and Trost, by their admission, watched hundreds of times, inspired by the experimental approach of the director. Composing an alternative soundtrack for the film, they did not completely abandon music from the film - having removed the orchestral processing, they left traditional songs that sound from the screen, and also used the “sound landscapes” of Parajanov: the bleating of the sheep, the chopper chopper, singing, flute and very loud wind instruments of the Gutsuls. In 2013, Ahaah released a double album called " You Have Alread Gone to The Other World ” , which included the songs inspired by Parajanov’s film.

11.

Demdike Stare

"Naked vampire", director Jean Rollen, 1971

The British duet of Gothic electronics marked his gloomy, soaked in the occult spirit with, probably, the most striking in terms of imagery by an erotic horror of all time. The natives of Lancashira, Sean Kanti and Miles Witekker, easily applied the industrial asymmetric Dub on the classics of the surrealism of the 1970s on bloodthirsty girls and grotesque fantasies. Result: the intense atmosphere and goosebumps on the skin.

12.

Red Snapper

"Tuki-Buki", director Djibril Diop Mambeti, 1973

British group Red Snapper , which is loved in Russia, rethought the visionary triumph of African cinema, the Senegal Psychedelic Row Muy of 1973. African motifs in the work of Red Snapper has surfaced earlier , but the real rampant Afrofank is promised here - with the Conggs, drums, xylophone and vintage keyboards. The Group all 2013 went with concerts, voicing the cinema, and this year will release the album with its version of the soundtrack. And all because the Londoners really liked the film directed by Mambeti and they want as many people as possible to watch him, especially since in 2008 the world of world cinema Martin Scorsze restored the film.

13.

KTL

"Sunrise of the Sun", director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1927

The canonical status of a masterpiece of the German expressionist Murnau did not interfere with Superduet Stephen O'Malli ( Sunn O ))) ) and Peter Rerberg ( Pita ) to move the story of the tragic love of a village resident to a woman from the city to his universe of the ominous drone and Noise.

14.

Hauschka

"Vampire", director Karl Dreyer, 1932

The German pianist and composer Folker Bermelmann, better known under the pseudonym Hauschka , undertook to voice the classic masterpiece of Dreyer with the help of piano and special effects, called Alfred Hitchcock the only film that must be watched twice. The surrealistic masterpiece thanks to the “prepared piano” Bertelmann began to play with Gothic Highways.

Bonus

For five years, Cardiff hosted the International Film Festival of soundtracks, in which, for example, Guillemots Indie Rods voiced “Faust” Murnau, and the electronic figure Fake Blood - “Suspiria” by Argento. However, in September last year, the festival did not take place due to financing problems, and now its future is under a big question. Write and rehearse an alternative sound path to the film, and then perform it is a troublesome business, requiring a good technical base and financing. In addition, the success of the event requires artistic courage and a desire to take a chance. A set of films for re -sounding seems quite limited - first of all, the masterpieces of silent cinema are used. Almost every DJ strives to adjust his Alleton to the “metropolis” of Fritz Lang, and novice builders curl around the “nosferata”. However, a neatly executed soundtrack for a boldly selected film can become a critical analysis tool and a magnifying glass for hidden meanings and subtexts of the film, and not parasitization on other people's achievements.