Plutonic Rainbows

Penguin Books:

The roots of Hallowe'en lie in the ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging 'soul cakes' in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay.

From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half-remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Hallowe'en was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.

The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognisable, other. Torn from album pages, sold piecemeal for pennies and scattered, abandoned to melancholy chance and the hands of strangers.

Amazing selection of photographs. Totally recommended.

A beautifully, haunting score from the Legowelt alias, this 2015 soundtrack to the ten minute documentary about the elusive Skunkape, that apparently resides in the Florida everglades is a mesmerising album and one you simply must own.

The soundtrack for Brad Abrahams documentary on South Florida's strangest bipedal resident, as told by the rare few who claim they've encountered the creature. At over 1.5 million acres, the 'Glades are the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi, with thousands of acres untouched by man. If indeed something this strange could exist, it would surely be here.

These tracks were all written for the documentary, most didn't end up in the final cut, mostly because the movie is just under 10 minutes long. But these sounds will linger beyond the images of the screen for a long time.

I was extremely wary of this film when it was first announced. I thought the whole thing was a recipe for disaster - an unnecessary follow-up to a film that for me, is a sort of holy grail. I didn't like the casting. The thought that the studio would just make a mockery of the original.

I am more than happy to be proved completely wrong. This film was utterly stunning from beginning to end. The sets, visuals, design etc was incredible. The acting was superb - even Jared Leto wasn't too bad. Small screen time probably helped there. The technology was cool, the story was well-written, intelligent and thought-provoking. It didn't feel like nearly three hours, at least for me. A total immersive world brought to life on screen. Absolutely amazing. This is a film I will want to watch over and over again.

I think the reason I like it so much was simply this: The people who created this film totally understood what made the original so good.

I only really had two issues with the film. The first, really minor I guess. The world they envisioned in 2049 didn't seem 'lived in' compared to the original where there were really old, ruined buildings, piles of refuse etc. It made it all seem very believable. I'm thinking about the litter blowing along the streets, neon signs working intermittently, the grimy elevator in Deckard's building, Pris covering herself in newspapers while waiting for Sebastian and the closing section in the original where Roy is chasing Deckard through dilapidated, rotten buildings with water dripping everywhere.

In 2049, the world of Los Angeles seemed sleek, angular and clean in a CGI way that I didn't believe in. It felt like all the signs of human habitation had been brushed away. That's a sobering and frightening thought if the future does indeed play out that way. Where are all the people?

The second (more problematic issue) was the soundtrack. Within the confines of the movie, it was okay ( but as a stand-alone work that you would want to listen to in the same way fans still enjoy the Vangelis work from 1982), Hans Zimmer's score was lazy and unimaginative. When you look back at truly epic films from decades past, Ben Hur, Lawrence Of Arabia, Ryan's Daughter, E.T, Star Wars and many, many others; they had a film score that was so truly wonderful, it could survive without the film and exist on its own for decades.

A film as beautiful and memorable as Blade Runner 2049 deserved something far, far better, in my opinion.

Overall, Blade Runner 2049 is a stunning achievement.

2nd album from Danish synth-improv duo Videodrones, dives deeper their brand of throbbing synth themes from the goriest movies that never were.

Boomkat:

"It’s easy to hear the starting point of Videodrones: From italian composers such as Fabio Frizzi, Marcello Giombini, Riz Ortolani - or even Morricone & Alessandroni at their most industrial. But Videodrones adds a touch of previously unheard madness to their Giallo-themed synth-gasms. Based largely on improvisation, Videodrones tosses and turns - it’s like the thing is ALIVE: leaving slimy trail of electronic musical styles in their wake: there’s toxic levels of italio disco, German kosmiche musik, new age, even some stabs at holy grails of 70’s and 80’s pop.

The record culminates in a Synth-proto-doom track - Nattens Hævn (Revenge of the Night): too weird to live, yet too rare to die. Videodrones improvisations are far from boring: chopped into smaller bits the album is of a suite-like nature - keeping the odd, jagged energy of improvisation, every part adds to a whole, larger narrative. The result is a suite-like walkthru, often changing pace, dropping notes or drifting in scale. The images Videodrones convey is collectedly strangely solemn - almost uplifting at times, in their maddening state of constant synth flux."

You can purchase the album here.