For some time now I have been involved in a collaborative arts project with local illustrator and artist Katie Craven. Before the first stage of the project could be unleashed onto the unsuspecting public, the project collapsed in on itself thanks to a Belgian art gallery among other things. To show just how close it got to being finished, there’s even a stop press advert … Continue reading Forest (Short Film) and A Screaming Breeze (Book).
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). Though not as fuelled by repression and eroticism as The Miraculous Mandarin, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta also made the slight transition from eroticism to horror. With its use on Doctor Who, the very basic groundwork for the piece was laid for … Continue reading Eroticism in the Music of Béla Bartók – Part 6 (Kubrick and Conclusions).
Elemental Chaos and Nietzsche’s Eternal Return in the Music of Alexander Scriabin and the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Introduction “It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.” (1625/2002, p.344) – Francis Bacon. The cyclic nature of life and the process of destruction and rejuvenation has been a subject of … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 1 (Introduction)
In spite of its very energetic reappraisal and various analyses, Michael Powell’s career destroying masterpiece, Peeing Tom (1960), is a film whose musical eccentricities and sound design contain hidden depths. For a film that appears on the surface to be almost excessively Freudian, this was normal yet, when looking at some of the detailed reappraisals and even some of the high-end re-evaluations of its narrative … Continue reading Peeping Tom (Michael Powell,1960) – Aural Perspectives of Murder.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Combining the Readings: Similarities, Contradictions and Cross-Over. “It’s as if the film were pinpointing the very essence of the unfilmable: the entwined couple, monstrous, the two-backed beast of the primal scene, the impossible couple of body and voice.” – Michel Chion (1999, p.149). While Murphy and Fenimore examine and address different points and issues, their resulting essays not only … Continue reading Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 4 (Conclusions)
There’s an unspoken relationship between a nation and its artists that rarely gets exposed during the artists’ lifetime. While history can be conceived as a linear time-line of events, resulting from various scenarios of cause and effect, it is not until after the death of an artist that it becomes clear how their work can be seen as a reflection of various cultural milestones and … Continue reading Journal De France – Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougret.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Though of course subjective, the natural Kierkegaardian immediacy of the music is instantly on show. Several sections of brooding along these themes can be read almost as seductions, with the build-ups working easily as well as the seduction segments from The Miraculous Mandarin. The pairs of strings that seem to roll over each other as they begin … Continue reading Eroticism in the Music of Béla Bartók – Part 5 (Post-Modern Pulp).
Strange undercurrents of sexuality pervade the films of Stanley Kubrick. Though not always present explicitly, the raw presence of dark desire and physical wanting seems scattered throughout his work. From Dr Strangelove‘s ideas of selective breeding based on the “sexual characteristics that will have to be of a highly stimulating nature” to The Shining‘s most surreal haunting of a man receiving oral sex from another … Continue reading Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Occult Sexuality
Part 1. Part 2. Emphasis on Acousmatic Concepts in Ross J. Fenimore’s “Voices that Lie Within”. “Psycho almost didn’t happen. This is a unique case of music literally saving a film.” – Sullivan (2006, p.246). Like much literature around Psycho, Fenimore’s “Voices That Lie Within” begins its argument with setting the scene. “Psycho begins with a theft.”(2010, p.80) he begins as so many often do. … Continue reading Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 3 (Acousmatic Concepts)
From its opening declarations, John Akomfrah’s documentary on Stuart Hall, The Stuart Hall Project (2013) explicitly acknowledges that it is going to be condensing fifty years of complex history and ideology into its relatively short running time. Akomfrah achieves this in an unusual but extraordinary way by linking the ideas and history of the public intellectual with his passion for the music of Miles Davis. … Continue reading The Stuart Hall Project – John Akomfrah (BFI).
Celluloid Wicker Man 