Category: Shadows of the Unseen

Third episode of “Shadows of the Unseen” for movement_radio Athens. Aired on 13 December 2020.

TRACKLIST

1. Mark Leckey – Dream English Kid, 1964 – 1999 AD, Part 1
From Dream English Kid, 1964 – 1999 AD (Mark Leckey, 2015)
2. Howard Shore – Vale Captured
From Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981)
3. Charles Gross – Blue Sunshine
From Blue Sunshine (Jeff Lieberman, 1977)
4. Nicolas Peyrac, Roland Romanelli – Antes de Separarnos
From Siete días de enero / Seven Days in January (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1979)
5. Phillan Bishop – Messiah of Evil
From Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973)
6. Gil Mellé – Op
From The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise, 1971)
7. Eliane Tortel, Raun Mackinnon – Hold on to Love
From Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973)
8. Mario Nascimbene, Olga Karlatos – Canto di Didone
From TV Show L’eneide (Franco Rossi, 1971)
9. Roberto Cacciapaglia – Acufene
From TV Show Stereo 2 (1981)
10. Nicolas Peyrac, Roland Romanelli – Rite
From Siete días de enero / Seven Days in January (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1979)
11. Patrick Juvet – Le Reve
From Laura: Shadows of a Summer (David Hamilton, 1979)
12. Philippe Besombes – la Plage
From Libra (Groupe Pattern, 1973)
13. Marianna Hill in Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973)
14. Henry Mancini – Don’t make waves
From Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967)
15. Pierre Henry – La Morte Musique
From Maléfices / Where the Truth Lies (Henri Decoin, 1962)
16. Maggi Payne – Flights of Fancy
From live dance/video-processing performance by Ed Tennenbaum’s Technological Feets (1984-1987)
17. Georg Deuter- Pearls
From Princess of Dawn / Soundtrack (library record, 1973)
18. Charles Wain – Driving Home
From The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977)
19. Tibor Szemző – Tractatus
From Wittgenstein Tractatus (Péter Forgács, 1992)

Second episode of “Shadows of the Unseen” for movement_radio Athens. Aired on 29 November and 4 December 2020.

TRACKLIST

1. Joji Yuasa – Document of the Long White Line
From Document of the Long White Line (Toshio Matsumoto, 1960)
2. Akio Suzuki – Les Chants de Maldoror
From Les Chants de Maldoror (Shuji Terayama, 1977)
3. Sun Ra – It’s after the end of the world
From Space is the Place (John Coney, 1972-1974)
4. Oskar Sala – Aus unserem Arbeitstag
From Aus unserem Arbeitstag / A Working Day (Manfred Durniok, 1969)
5. Peter Finch in Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
6. Desmond Leslie – The Coming of the Elements
From Sacrifice, B.C. 5,000 “sound picture” (Desmond Leslie, 1955 – 1959)
7. Bruce Lacey – Music From Double Exposure
From Double Exposure (Jill Bruce & Bruce Lacey, 1975)
8. Antarjyami Muni – Twin Conch-shell Solo
From The Gardener of Eden (James Broughton, 1981 – originally on Folk Music of India (Orissa, 1963))
9. Roger Waters, Ron Geesin – Music From The Body
From The Body (Roy Battersby, 1970)
10. Ole Ørsted – The Sinful Dwarf
From The Sinful Dwarf (Vidal Raski, 1973)
11. Ron Geesin – Agonythm
From Last House on Dead End Street(Roger Watkins, 1973)
12. Fragment from Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984)
13. Cabaret Voltaire – Theme 1
From Chance Versus Causality (Babeth Mondini, 1979)
14. Sam Waymon – The Seduction
From Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973)
15. John Carpenter, Alan Howarth
From They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)
16. Kurt Stenzel – Total Extermination
From Dune (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1974, film never realized)
17. Melvins – Queen Powder Party
From A Walk With Love & Death (Jesse Nieminen, 2017)
18. Ludo Mich – Music From the Film Saturnus
From Saturnus (Ludo Mich, 1971)
19. Salix Alba – Générique
From Les tueurs fous / Lonely killers (Boris Szulzinger, 1972)
20. Osanna, Luis Bacalov – Preludio
From Milano Calibro 9 / Caliber 9 (Fernando Di Leo, 1972)
21. Fragment from They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)

First episode of “Shadows of the Unseen” for movement_radio Athens. Aired on 15 November and 25 November 2020.

TRACKLIST

1. Linda Manz in Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)
2. DICK TRACY (Loorie aka Laurent Petitgand, Meche Mamecier, Chico Rojo Ortega) – Tokyo-Ga
From Tokyo-Ga (Wim Wenders, 1985)
3. MORTON SUBOTNICK – Dreamwood
From Dreamwood (James Broughton, 1972)
4. TOD DOCKSTADER – Tango
From Cybernetik 5.3 (John Stehura, 1960-65)
5. MORT GARSON – Bamboo City
From Didn’t You Hear? (Skip Sherwood, 1970)
6. BERNARD PARMEGIANI – La guerre des insectes
From La guerre des insectes (Peter Kassovitz, 1980)
7. ZDENEK LISKA – Ikarie XB-1
From Ikarie XB-1 (Jindřich Polák, 1963)
8. JOZEF MALOVEC – Výhybka
From Výhybka (Ján Lacko, 1963)
9. Tuesday Weld in Play it As it Lays (Frank Perry, 1972)
10. LINDSAY COOPER – Pictures from the Great Exhibition
From Song of the Shirt (Sue Clayton & Jonathan Curling, 1979)
11. Elizabeth Taylor in Secret Ceremony (Joseph Losey, 1968)
12. JAIME MENDOZA-NAVA – The Brotherhood of Satan
From The Brotherhood of Satan (Bernard McEveety, 1971)
13. RICHARD RODNET BENNETT, Mia Farrow – Secret Ceremony
From Secret Ceremony (Joseph Losey, 1968)
14. NORA ORLANDI – A Doppia Faccia
From A Doppia Faccia / Double Face (Riccardo Freda, 1969)
15. BENEDETTO GHIGLIA – Wanted
From Adiós gringo (Giorgio Stegani aka George Finley, 1965)
16. RON GEESIN – The Daily Round
From The Daily Round (Dick Bush, 1971)
17. ANDRZEJ KORZYNSKI – Trying to Catch a Fly
From Polowanie na muchy / Hunting Flies (Andrzej Wajda, 1969)
18. BRUNO MADERNA – Down down down / Guaiaba
From La Morte ha fatto l’uovo / Death Laid an Egg (Giulio Questi, 1968)
19. Evžen Illín in Lásky jedné plavovlásky / Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, 1965)
20. GEORGE HARRISON – Dream Scene
From Wonderwall (Joe Massot, 1968)
21. BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL – Lucifer Rising
From Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1972)

The seventh installment of Shadows of the Unseen features pieces by familiar names such as Delia Derbyshire (an assemblage of works she produced for the BBC that still sounds incredibly fresh, more than half a century after its making), Frans Zwartjes (this time a fragmented composition structured around a haunting sing-a-long melody) and Henning Christiansen (part of fluxorum organuma, a wonderful piece he did for a collaborative event with Joseph Beuys at Wide White Space gallery in Antwerp, where it was also recorded on film).
But there’s also a few new discoveries, starting with Mireille Kyrou, an Egypt-born French-Palestinian composer who studied with Olivier Messiaen before joining the GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musicale) in 1958. Unfortunately she only spent three years at the GRM, after which she married filmmaker/critic Ado Kyrou and devoted herself to family life. There seems to be only piece available of her time at GRM, which was published on the compilation ‘Musique Concrète’ (1964) and can be found online. The other remaining track is the soundtrack she made for La chute d’Icare (1965) by Gérard Patris, who was at that time starting to work with Luc Ferrari on a series of filmed intimate portraits of great musicians such as Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Cecil Taylor.
Another discovery is Violeta Parra’s soundtrack for Sergio Bravo’s Mimbre (1958), filmed during visits to the home workshop of wicker craftsman Alfredo Manzano (aka Manzanito) in Santiago. The score was improvised and recorded during a silent screening of the film, showcasing the unique guitar stylings of this Chilean composer, who is often called the “Mother of Latin American folk”.
Also of note is the score of the Hungarian animation film Fehérlófia (1981) by the Illustrious Unknown István Vajda. Robert Beatty, to whom I owe this discovery, rightly described the soundtrack as “a dense, alien, claustrophobic electronic mass that wouldn’t sound out of place now on a label such as Editions Mego”.
A few new releases on the horizon are referenced here: Takashi Inagaki’s music for the films of Takashi Ito will be out on Purge.xxx, and Finders Keepers Records continues its mining of Suzanne Ciani’s archives with the release of her score for a skiing documentary (which we believe to be Joel H. Schroedel’s 1974 Denali traverse). In this mix, however, you’ll hear a fragment from a Ciani score that has not been released yet, for Lloyd Michael Williams’ psychedelic reverie Rainbow Children (1975).
For the electronic dance aficionados: do check out the proto-techno soundtracks by Erkki Kurenniemi (1964), Gershon Kingsley (1970 – yes he’s the guy who did ‘Popcorn’) and Bernard Parmegiani (1977), which suggest that cinema might have offered the necessary experimental playing field leading up to techno’s development.

1. Ed Emshwiller – Carol (Ed Emshwiller, 1970)
2. Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)
3. Mireille Kyrou – La chute d’Icare (Gérard Patris, 1965)
4. Takashi Inagaki – Thunder (Takashi Ito, 1982)
5. Alain Clavier – Ceci est un message enregistré (Jean-Thomas Bédard, 1973)
6. Zdeněk Liška – Et Cetera (Jan Švankmajer, 1966)
7. Eric Wetherell – Sky (ITV TV series, 1975)
8. Paddy Kingsland – The Changes (BBC TV series, 1975)
9. Stephan Wittwer – Der rechte Weg (Peter Fischli & David Weiss, 1983)
10. Delia Derbyshire – Pot Au Feu (assembly of pieces created for various BBC programmes, 1965-1968)
11. Tristram Cary – Sebastian (David Greene, 1967)
12. Gershon Kingsley – Pixillation (Lillian Schwartz, 1970)
13. Erkki Kurenniemi – Hyppy [The Jump] (Eino Ruutsalo, 1964)
14. Bernard Parmegiani – Versailles… peut-être (Michel Sibra, 1977)
15. Michi Tanaka – Sado [Third] (Yôichi Higashi, 1978)
16. Suzanne Ciani – Rainbow Children (Lloyd Michael Williams, 1975)
17. Dave Ball, Genesis P. Orridge, William S. Burroughs – Decoder (Jürgen Muschalek, 1984)
18. Tom Recchion – Lost Motion (Janie Geiser, 1999)
19. István Vajda – Fehérlófia [Son of The White Mare] (Marcell Jankovics, 1981)
20. Adrian Corker – Die Habenichtse [The Have-Nots] (Florian Hoffmeister, 2016)
21. Pauline Oliveros – Bent Time (Barbara Hammer, 1983)
22. Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar – Dhrupad (Mani Kaul, 1982)
23. Vijay Raghav Rao – Abid (Pramof Pati, 1972)
24. Jonathan Halper – Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, 1960 version)
25. Acanthus (Daniel Buffet, Gérard Sallette) – Le frisson des vampires (Jean Rollin, 1971)
26. Frans Zwartjes, Towe Zwartjes, Rudolf Zwartjes – Behind Your Walls (Frans Zwartjes, 1970)
27. Valentin de las Sierras (Bruce Baillie, 1971)
28. Violeta Parra – Mimbre (Sergio Bravo, 1958)
29. Pierre F. Brault, Geneviève Bujold – Rouli-Roulant (Claude Jutra, 1966)
30. Spirit – Model Shop (Jacques Demy, 1969)
31. Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944)
32. Fred Karlin – Up the Down Staircase (Robert Mulligan, 1967)
33. Nora Orlandi, Paolo Ormi – Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh [The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh or Blade of the Ripper] (Sergio Martino, 1971)
34. Gene Moore – Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)
35. Georges Delerue, Cora Vaucaire – Une aussi longue absence (Henri Colpi, 1961)
36. Jean Wiener – Voici le temps des assassins (Julien Duvivier, 1956)
37. Luciano Berio, Carmelo Bene – Il canto d’amore di Prufrock (Nico d’Alessandria, 1967)
38. Henning Christiansen – Eurasienstab (Joseph Beuys & Henning Christiansen, 1968)
39. Europa ’51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)

The sixth installment of the Shadows of the Unseen series once more offers an adventurous voyage of discovery through the landscape of cinematic sound and music. Some influential sound studios mentioned in the previous post are represented again: The Polish Radio Experimental Studio (Krzysztof Penderecki), Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (Vladimir Ussachevsky and students Alice Fields and Pril Smiley, as well as Ilhan Mimaroğlu), BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Delia Derbyshire and – associated – David Vorhaus) and GRM (François-Bernard Mâche’s only and superb soundtrack to L’annonce faite à Marie, which comes highly recommended by Stephen O’Malley – but is unfortunately out of print).
Brian Gascoigne, David Briscoe and David Vorhaus’ justly celebrated OST for Saul Bass’ only feature film Phase IV makes several appearances to celebrate its release (in restored version) on BluRay (via Carlotta).
Also just released: Ron Geesin’s soundtracks for Stephen Dwoskin (just out on Trunk Records) – which reminded me of the great music that Gavin Bryars’s made for the same filmmaker (never released, but you can find a taste here).
Shout out to Finders Keepers Records who made me discover the wonderful music that Andrzej Korzynski composed for Andrzej Zulawski, Andrzej Wajda, and others, but also the soundtracks for Jean Rollin’s films, amongst others by François Tusques (an influential figure in the French free jazz scène, who often worked with Barney Wilen, who made an appearance in the previous mix) and Pierre Raph.
Another shout out to Shinjuku Thief who meticulously collected countless obscure musical fragments of Japanese films – many I hadn’t heard of before, so thank you! – some of which are present in this mix.
Some musical pieces might ring a bell, as they have been sampled or appropriated in recent years (already in earlier mixes, notably François de Roubaix’s Dernier Domicile Connu, as sampled by Kendrick Lamar), most famously Gianfranco & Gian Piero Reverberi’s music for Django, Prepare a Coffin (by Gnarls Barkley), but also Carter Burwell’s OST for Psycho III (by Aim, but it could just as well have been DJ Shadow or, why not, Burial). And I’m pretty sure the Radiohead band members have been intensively listening to Giovanni Fusco (as they have done to Penderecki).
While working on this mix, I have been enjoying unearthing some obscure horror and mystery films, like The Premonition, The Ballad of Tam Lin, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and, especially, William Dieterle’s thrilling Portrait of Jennie, whose soundtrack was originally commissioned to Bernard Herrmann who only finished one (all-too forgotten but terrific) song (while the title song by J. Russell Robinson, for its part, went on to become a hit for Nat King Cole). Every mix seems to stir up the joy of discovery, and I hope you feel the same!

1. Vladimir Ussachevsky, Alice Fields, Pril Smiley – Line of Apogee (Lloyd Williams, 1968)
2. Henry Mollicone, Pril Smiley – The Premonition (Robert Allen Schnitzer, 1976)
3. Delia Derbyshire – The World About Us / The Last Caravans (BBC TV series, 1967)
4. Andrzej Korzynski – Diabel [The Devil] (Andrzej Zulawski, 1972)
5. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi – Honjin satsujin jiken [Death at an Old Mansion] (Yôichi Takabayashi, 1975)
6. Toshiro Mayuzumi – Ningen jôhatsu [A Man Vanishes] (Shôhei Imamura, 1967)
7. Ron Geesin – Chinese Checkers (Stephen Dwoskin, 1965)
8. François Tusques – Le viol du vampire (Jean Rollin, 1967)
9. Włodzimierz Kotonski – Labirynt (Jan Lenica, 1963)
10. Krzysztof Penderecki ‎- Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie [The Saragossa Manuscript] (Wojciech Has, 1965)
11. François-Bernard Mâche – L’annonce faite à Marie (Alain Cuny, 1991)
12. Ilhan Mimaroğlu – Fellini – Satyricon [Fellini’s Satyricon] (Federico Fellini, 1969)
13. Teizo Matsumura – Chi no mure [Apart from Life] (Kei Kumai, 1970)
14. Franco Battiato – Brunelleschi (Roberto Cacciaguerra, RAI TV film 1978, unused)
15. Giovanni Fusco – La guerre est finie (Alain Resnais, 1966)
16. Gianfranco & Gian Piero Reverberi – Preparati la bara! [Django, Prepare a Coffin] (Ferdinando Baldi, 1968)
17. Marianne Faithful – Made in U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
18. Pierre Raph – La rose de fer (Jean Rollin, 1973)
19. Andrzej Korzynski – Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)
20. Toru Takemitsu – Tôkyô sensô sengo hiwa [The Man Who Left His Will on Film] (Nagisa Ôshima, 1970)
21. Toshi Ichiyanagi – Erosu purasu gyakusatsu [Eros + Massacre] (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1969)
22. Egisto Macchi – Nucleo centrale investigativo (RAI TV series, 1974)
23. Bernard Herrmann, Jennifer Jones – Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948)
24. Hikaru Hayashi – Kôshikei [Death by Hanging] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1968)
25. Brian Gascoigne, David Briscoe, David Vorhaus – Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974)
26. Bo Harwood – The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
27. Orville Stoeber – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (John Hancock, 1971)
28. Joel Haertling – I… Dreaming (Stan Brakhage, 1988)
29. Carter Burwell – Psycho III (Anthony Perkins, 1986)
30. Gavin Bryars – Central Bazaar (Stephen Dwoskin, 1976)
31. Light Forms (Music For Light Bulbs And Churches) (Steve Roden, 2002)
32. Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold, 1998, based on the Andy Hardy film series (George B. Seitz et al., 1937–1958) + rework by Christian Fennesz (2001)
33. Gino Marinuzzi Jr. – Terrore nello spazio [Planet of the Vampires] (Mario Bava, 1965)
34. David Vorhaus – The Ballad of Tam Lin (Roddy McDowall, 1970)
35. Vladimir Ussachevsky, Alice Fields, Pril Smiley – Line of Apogee (Lloyd Michael Williams, 1968)
36. Brian Gascoigne, David Briscoe, David Vorhaus – Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974)