A snippet from Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967) came to Gorgie today. An eerie stillness, a surreal chav-free mise en scène. And one car was blasting out ‘The Boys of Summer’.
Traffic jams aren’t always rotten.
Category Archives: Music
Trying to capture album covers.
Ventured into some vinyl shop on Cockburn Street, Edinburgh the other day. I wished to recreate the truly gnarly album cover of DJ Shadow’s truly spellbinding Entroducing (1996).
Entroducing (1996).
I was loitering around the venue for a good 25 minutes, the owner becoming visibly vexed with yours truly. He didn’t like the cut of one’s jib, nor the fact I was papping his customers.
I managed to get a half-decent snap out of the 1,835 taken, and this was of some random not even in the fucking shop.
I’ll see you in another life when we are both cats.
Sensation White – Amsterdam.
2010, 2011, 2012 – I call those melted days the ‘Holy Trinity’. In your twenties you have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck you want; my modus vivendi was getting absolutely melted at trance events on the continent. Sadly, those days are over, but I do enjoy a wee throwback video from time to time, drinking Peach Schnapps in my living room, swinging a glow stick around like a demented spacker.
As for Amsterdam, it’s a bit of a hovel (too many ruffians, too many bikes) but the Ajax strip is lovely and their stadium permits all manner of chav behaviour in the summer.
Ennio Morricone tour.
I first heard Ennio Morricone emanating from a dusty 4:3 TV in 1999. It was quite the introduction. For a Few Dollars More (1965) was on and I must confess it was the music that sucked me in rather than the story; I’d simply never heard of anything even remotely like it before. These days, on a Saturday afternoon attempting to trot off flab from a surfeit of Friday night booze, I on occasion find myself panting past our local Edinburgh prison to the very same maestro whom I ‘met’ in ’99, The Mission (1986) theme carrying me to the finish line.
Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
The Italian’s music is synonymous with American cinema, just as his friend, compatriot and collaborator Sergio Leone is in the vanguard of Americana. Looking back at those Leone masterworks, seldom has music so perfectly been synced to visuals. And it is telling to know that the score was indeed played on set and the shots aligned to its rhythm.
His final live performances have arrived this year. I hate to say ‘swansong’ but one wonders where Morricone continues to muster the energy from at 90 years of age. His upcoming concerts are in Antwerp, Dublin, Verona, and the last showings in June – six nights in a row – at the Terme di Caracalla in Rome. One must truly experience The Ecstasy of Gold at these splendid Roman baths.
Terme di Caracalla, Rome.
One expects an anthology – this a fucking hell of a task to cherry-pick from over 500 scores – of some of the most operatic and iconic music to have emerged from 20th century cinema. Ennio Morricone is a trooper.
Further reading/viewing:
http://www.enniomorricone.org/events/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/27/ennio-morricone-review-o2-arena-london
Deadmau5 was in Edinburgh.
The Corn Exchange at Chesser isn’t used to grandiose events. The progressive house master did, however, give us locals a two-hour treat, reeling off classics from ‘Longest Road’ to ‘Strobe’. Lots of folk looked like they were on eccies. Sadly, I wasn’t. But I wish I was. Nevertheless, this is the most exciting thing to ever occur at Chesser since a flasher was lifted in the Asda car park a few years back.
808s & Heartbreak – memories made in the coldest winter.
I first heard this album as I wandered aimlessly around Stockholm in December 2008, bar to bar and park to park apropos of nothing; I was merely documenting with some shitty camera phone the Venice of the North in winter. I was by no means lonely as I caught up with various travelling characters at the hostel after sundown, but the Kanye West soundtrack that accompanied daylight and early evening certainly had a great effect on me.
Drottninggatan.
I’ve always thought that music elevates the normal up into the cinematic, that there’s an extra reverence thrown in the mix. I had nothing profound to think about but ‘Street Lights’ or ‘Coldest Winter’ synced to me staring at a pigeon eating a discarded Subway butty was rather transcendental. Stockholm was the city for this moody music, and a walk back from Systembolaget to City Backpackers through Sodermalm with a £40-equivalent bottle of manky rum and additional ’08 Auto-Tune was a most brooding adventure.
I know nothing about Kanye West but this soul-searchingly depressing album – at times it’s like a self-pitying drunk crying about how his/her life went down the pan – is a cracker. I like the miserable and Kanye West is the one for me.
Further reading:
https://djbooth.net/features/2017-01-05-defending-a-masterpiece-808s-heartbreak
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 