We have a recently launched boutique cinema open in the shopping precinct near us, The Northern Light, in what used to be WH Smith. It shows all sorts of films and also puts on some interesting one offs. Chris Massey runs Sprechen, his Manchester based label that has put out records by Psychederek, Causeway and Steve Cobby this year and is celebrating ten years of action with a compilation called Ein Null. That's Chris in the photo above DJing in the cinema in Sale last week.
In partnership with Richie V, Chris has being doing a series of events where they re- score silent movies from the 1920s with a pair of turntables, a mixer and a laptop, DJing a new soundtrack to German Expressionist films. In the summer they did Metropolis and Nosferatu. I missed both due to other commitments but last week they screened and re- scored The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and I was able to go.
The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 film directed by Robert Wiene and tells the story of a hypnotist, a somnambulist and a murder in a small German town. The film's writers- Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer- were scarred by their experiences with the military in the First World War and deeply distrustful of the authorities. Dr Caligari is not only one of the earliest cinema films, it's also thought to be the first with a twist ending. The film's sets are jagged and surreal, doors and windows at strange angles, and all very claustrophobic. The sleepwalker, Cesare, is played by Conrad Veidt...
Chris and Richie soundtrack the film's eighty minute running time with a variety of instrumental music, cutting, mixing and cross fading as the scenes and action changes. They squeeze a lot in, some of which I recognise (but I wish I'd made some notes immediately afterwards as I can't remember it all now). Michael Rother's unmistakable guitar sound glides in at one point, a neat cultural link between Weimar Germany and '70s krautrock. There is ambient and trip hop and towards the end a huge proggy guitar solo track blasts in.
This is Fortana di Luna from Michael Rother's 1978 album Sterntaler which I'm sure wasn't what Chris and Richie played but it could easily have fitted in with their new score to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari
It made me more annoyed that I missed both Metropolis and Nosferatu. Chris and Richie are tackling The Passion Of Joan Of Arc next, a 1928 French silent film.
Back in 2017 Factory Floor re- scored Metropolis and released their version of the soundtrack as a double CD/ four album box set. The project was commissioned by the London Science Museum to mark the 90th anniversary of the film's release and they performed their score live at the musuem's IMAX. Factory Floor are the perfect group to do Fritz Lang's film, their synth futurism the ideal match to the futuristic sci fi/ 20th century machine industrialism of Metropolis. Heart Of Data
Back in 1998 I saw Andrew Weatherall DJ live to a screening of Nosferatu at Manchester's Cornerhouse (it seems apt that DJing new scores to films was something that the pioneering Mr Weatherall was doing nearly three decades ago). It wasn't particularly busy. Andrew was set up at the front with two turntables and a box of records. On screen Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror played, black and white vampirism directed by F.W. Murnau with Max Schreck as Count Orlok bringing a plague to a small German town. Andrew's score was all weird ambient and massively pitched down trip hop and illbient and downtempo tracks. At some point many years alter some of us managed to identify that one of the tracks was from Leila's 1998 album Like Weather but I can't now recall which track. Let's have this one...
The screening and Weatherall re- scoring of Nosferatu was memorable for another reason. Lou was fairly heavily pregnant with Isaac and at one crucial point in the film, as the images and music reached a crescendo, it clearly affected the unborn Isaac and one of his limbs, a hand or foot visibly bulged and moved in a wave like a shark's fin across Lou's stomach.
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