Music For A Film That Never Was (2016, Netherlands/various)
As randomly chosen by survey[1] on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 655 on The List, submitted by platenworm.
Here’s an interesting one for you! This album is the culmination of a project started by Luc Ex, a Dutch acoustic bass player, composer, sound artist, and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his work in the punk/rock band The Ex (who we’ll meet again in future spotlights). Recruiting a handful of brilliant contributors whose names will be familiar to some of you – Fennesz (Austria), Jim O’Rourke and Colin Stetson (US), Zlaya Loud (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Jillis Kruk and Stefan Kruger (Netherlands), and Ingrid Laubrock (Germany) – Ex asked each contributor to first write a scene for an imaginary film, and then compose and record a piece of music for that scene. Contributing a piece himself, Ex then arranged the resulting 7 songs into what could be called a soundtrack, for a film that doesn’t exist.
Each of the pieces in themselves are excellent (my favourites are Stetson’s “The Storm” and Ex’s “Ziganie”). But, knowing that context, it’s fun to listen to the album without any other distractions and imagine what those imaginary scenes could possibly be.
What happens in the film that you hear?
- The survey choices that initially led to this spotlight were “I’m not your lover, I’m not your friend”, “I am something that you’ll never comprehend”, “No need to worry, no need to cry”, and “I’m your messiah and you’re the reason why”, following surveys that had “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man”/“I am something that you’ll never understand”/“I’ll never beat you, I never lie”/“And if you’re evil I’ll forgive you by and by cuz” and “You, I would die 4 U, yeah”/”Darling, if you want me to”/”You, I would die 4 U”. There was a 3-way tie between the last three options, so there will be a spotlight resulting from each of those options. For the second option and this spotlight, the survey result was translated as picking the second album in The List that contained a word in the phrase – in this case, “never”. ↩︎
#1001OtherAlbums #ChristianFennesz #ColinStetson #electronicMusic #experimental #Fennesz #jazz #JillisKruk #JimORourke #ListenToThis #LucEx #music #musicDiscovery #Musodon #soundtrack #StefanKruger #TheEx #ZlayaLoud