Music Blogger

Krautrock it with White Hills and vintage vids

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Lord, we love ourselves some krautrock here in the Bay, don’t we? Well, expect diehards to be out in force tonight, Sept. 29, at the Knockout for the titled-like-ya-see-it Two Hours of Krautrock II screening, presented by Aquarius Records and “Klaus to the Edge” (WAR 93.7 FM). Ja, ja, we’re talking videos pulled from German TV, circa 1971 to 1979, of Can, Klaus Schulze, Tiger B Smith, Kraan, Tritonius, Epitaph, Kraftwerk (with Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother), Tangerine Dream, Holderlin, and THE SCORPIONS. Geez, do they qualify?

Anyhoo, after the screening, NY krautrock-esque psychedelicists White Hills perform. “Klaus to the Edge” DJs AC and Allan fill out the evening of free popcorn and Germanic drink specials.

TWO HOURS OF KRAUTROCK II AND WHITE HILLS
Mon/29, screening 10 p.m. and White Hills go on at midnight, $5
Knockout
3223 Mission, SF
(415) 550-6994

Rediscovering metal’s Yngwie Malmsteen

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By Ben Richardson

If you’re not a guitarist guitar nerd or a heavy metal aficionado, you’ve probably never heard of Yngwie Malmsteen. After seeing this picture, though, you’ve learned one thing about him: the man is a complete and total megalomaniac. Born into a musically gifted family in Sweden, Malmsteen (ne Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck) got his start as a 10-year-old guitar prodigy, honing his chops by cultivating a bizarrely retrograde obsession with virtuoso 19th-century Italian violinist and purported devil-in-disguise Niccolo Paganini.

Malmsteen arrived on the American hard rock scene in 1984, in those bygone days when neo-classical shredding was way cool. His debut with his band Rising Force was nominated for a Grammy and enjoyed considerable retail success, and he soon became convinced that he was some kind of rock star, a notion that he has apparently been unable to shake.

Marrying the ego that resulted from his impossibly fast playing to a kind of hairspray-diva complex that would put some of the ’80s most overamplified misanthropes to shame, Malmsteen indulged in all of the usual buffoonery, rashing an expensive sports car, buying lots of gold jewelry, and never, ever buttoning his shirt higher than his navel.

Getting back to Silver Jews’ David Berman: on intelli design, presidential spawn, honky-tonk poses

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Here’s more from a recent interview with David Berman of the Silver Jews (for more, go to Sonic Reducer):

SFBG: Thanks for waiting! I forgot my tape recorder at home so I’m going to have to type and take notes as we talk.

David Berman: OK, I’ll go slow. The trade-off is I’ll give you monosyllabic answers. Silence and then two or three syllables.

Kims-met: Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon talks about ‘Phantom Orchard,’ good TV, making art, NYC

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Kim Gordon brought much subtle insight when I spoke to her recently in conjunction with tonight’s performance at Montalvo Arts Center – more than we could fit into print. (For more, go to here.)

SFBG: How did you get involved with the “Phantom Orchard” project?

Kim Gordon: Well Zeena Parkins actually made the connection – and she and Ikue [Mori] asked me to join in and also Yoshimi. I’ve played with Ikue and Yoshimi before but never with Zeena, so I’m really looking forward to that.


Stormy weather: Kim Gordon and Ikue Mori at No Fun Fest 2004.

ATP NY Day Two: Les Savy Fav, Shellac, Fuck Buttons, Harmonia, Om, and – what? – more

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Prickly, angular goodness: Shellac at ATP NY. All photos by Jessica Reeves.

By Todd Lavoie

Ah, the weekend was in need of a good easing-in period – nothing too strenuous, see, considering the epic scale of the Saturday night to come. So, on Sept. 20, we settled into our day by catching a couple of films at the Criterion Screening Room: Albert and David Maysles’ Gimme Shelter and David Markey’s 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The former – a chronicle of how it all went wrong at the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway, was absolutely riveting – while the latter was a bit more hit-or-miss, thanks to a nerve-grating focus on Thurston Moore as the documentary’s free-styling, wisecracking prankster. Having thoroughly relished the considerably mellower, less chatty Moore of the night before, I couldn’t cotton to the younger, ever-vibrating version I was witnessing onscreen. Still, the Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Dinosaur Jr. performances in the film made it all worthwhile.

Next it was rush, rush, rush to the main stage: Fuck Buttons were about to bring the noise! We arrived just in time, and the Bristol, England, duo had just finished sound-check. Focusing largely on their March-released slab of epic gorgeousness, Street Horrrsing (ATP), the set was flush with all of the touchstones of the Fuck Buttons sound: steady electro-drone, pulsating sheets-of-static majesty, and floor-thumping noise-house.

A glistening sheen seemed to have been applied to the entire proceedings, thanks to scatters of night sky-seeking synth sparkles. Dance, drone out, raise arms to the heavens – the choice was ours, and the crowd was evenly split between the three activities.

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Go directly to jail: Les Savy Fav vocalist Tim Harrington in prisoner getup.

Multilingual beats, Obama love: Brazilian Girls move on with ‘New York City’

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By Brandon Bussolini

Brazilian Girls just released an album named for a city that they’ll be leaving for a little bit. They used to tour a lot, but now vocalist Sabina Sciubba, keyboard player Didi Gutman, and drummer Aaron Johnston are leaving New York City to spend time elsewhere. This makes sense since Brazilian Girls’ music has no single place of origin or definite direction. Their new album, like its predecessors, sits across several different styles and changes from minute to minute.

It can be a fun game to chase down the kinds of music Brazilian Girls incorporate into their own, but the sound itself has very little to do with tradition or context – it’s synthetic, and at its best is good enough to stop you from wondering whether what you’re listening to is world music or not – and whether there’s even anything wrong with that.

Sciubba’s voice is the band’s most distinctive element, but the songs themselves are little intelligent machines, and they work unhurriedly and with economy. The new full-length’s first song, “St. Petersburg,” is where this clicks into place immediately, with its samba-techno rhythm and big triumphant chorus, where Sciubba’s typically arch delivery breaks with sophistication and becomes uncomplicatedly raw and moving. I had the opportunity to speak with Sciubba as the group began a short tour supporting New York City (Verve Forecast). Brazilian Girls play Mezzanine Saturday, Sept. 27.

SFBG: I read that after completing the album you took off for Paris. Was this a vacation, or something more permanent?

ATP NY Day One: Built to Spill, Meat Puppets, and ‘Shining’ glam

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Les Savy Fav’s Tim Harrington rises above. All photos by Jessica Reeves.

By Todd Lavoie

I just flew in from New York, and boy, are my arms tired! Ba-dum-bum.

A corny opener to this humble journal of my All Tomorrow’s Parties NY experience, but entirely too apropos for my weekend of serious ear-grinning up in the Catskills. Consider the venue choice: Kutsher’s Hotel, one of the few resorts from the “Oy vey!” heyday – Oy veyday? – of the Borscht Belt still in operation.

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This place was once at the absolute dead-center of the Henny Youngman/Jackie Mason/Sid Caesar nexus of Jewish summer-resort comedy, after all, so a few yuk-yuks were more than expected by the several thousand attendees of the so-called “boutique music festival.” As it turned out, there were yuks galore – but most of them were inspired by, or directed at, Kutsher’s itself.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Calexico, SEVA, Jose Gonzalez, We Are Wolves, and so much more

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SW a-swirl: Calexico’s “Crystal Frontier.”

San Francisco can’t stop, won’t stop – as usual there’s far too much to do, see, and hear. Here are a few worthies to check out.

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THE GIRLS
Yeah, you heard me right: the Girls, man, the Girls. Meaning, the Seattle garage-wave combo whose perky song stylings have caught Spin‘s ear (much like SF’s Girls, sans “the”). Wed/24, 9 p.m., $8. Uptown Night Club, 1948 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 451-8100.

JOSE GONZALEZ
His handsome Veneer and haunting songs – we’re smitten. Wed/24, 8 and 10 p.m., $25. Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakl. (510) 238-9200.

Britpop Faves: Schooled on Stereophonics

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By Daniel N. Alvarez

Part of a continuing series: Britpop Faves

The Stereophonics burst onto the Britpop scene with their critically acclaimed 1997 debut, Word Gets Around (V2), and their hard indie-rock sound was a breath of fresh air in a time when Britpop groups like the Verve and Oasis were scaling back the rawness of their early albums and heading for more refined pastures. The Welsh threepiece had found their niche as the un-ironic, ballsy foil to a scene that had been castrated by string arrangements and power ballads.

The band followed it up with Performance and Cocktails (V2, 1999), which shot to no. 1 on the UK charts. However, for their third album, the Phonics took a brave step forward with the bluesy, toned-down Just Enough Education to Perform (V2, 2001). They mostly shunned the rollicking hard-rock sounds of their first two releases, while incorporating an alt-country, rootsy American vibe. The British press, unsurprisingly, crucified them for this stunning show of insubordination.

JEEP, as it’s called by fans, opens with a salute to the past. The upbeat “Vegas Two Times” would seamlessly fit beside either of the Stereophonics’ two previous full-lengths, but this would be the only song could.

‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”s Haden Blackman untethered

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By Ben Richardson

While attending the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed launch event at the Harrison Street Best Buy on Sept. 15, I got a chance to part the ranks of cosplayers in Storm Trooper armor and ask project lead Haden Blackman a few questions about his game.

He provided interesting insights into the process of game design and all its challenges, joys, and complications, especially those peculiar to a studio like Lucasarts that is just one branch of the Star Wars entertainment empire. Though he was unwilling to admit that the game’s shoddy force grip targeting was a problem for all gamers, not just the “hardcore” among us (I complained about it in my review), he spoke convincingly about his desire to make the game accessible to players of all demographics and inclinations.

SFBG: In the speech you gave earlier up on the stage, you made it sound like this was an idea that you’ve had for a long, long time. When a game first comes together, when it first germinates, is it a story idea that leads a game to be constructed around it, or are there game elements or things you want to do that in turn birth a story?

The red and the black: Shepard Fairey at Shooting Gallery, White Walls

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By Kat Renz

I had no idea when I pitched a piece on Shepard Fairey’s “Duality of Humanity” solo show that I’d be getting an up-close preview, a public/private wheat-pasted hanging on the western wall of my room, now amounting to the best street “graffiti” (it was sanctioned by my landlord)/anti-war advert in the ‘hood.

A totally auspicious coincidence, or have I just somehow managed to know enough cool people that the degrees of separation are getting fewer by the day? I’m not sure, but hosting a giant black and beige “Peace Bomber” – yes, a peace sign made of a bomber plane – is pretty sweet.

This does not substitute for paying a long visit to Fairey’s four-room, two-story show at the Tenderloin’s adjacent art hubs, the Shooting Gallery and White Walls. Nor should the sudden ubiquity of public art Fairey and his nighttime posse have offered the city these past couple weeks – from the watchful, familiar furrow of Andre the Giant stickers to his larger visage where Highways 280 and 101 intersect to the red, blue, and black Obama poster (the one piece not for sale in his show) on the side of that squatable-looking house at 15th and Dolores streets.

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The Verve go ‘Forth’?

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THE VERVE
Forth
(On Your Own/MRI/Megaforce/RED)

By Todd Lavoie

Deep down, I’d always suspected the Verve might come back. There was something so brashly epic, so cockily magisterial about their brawls-and-all band-breaker-upper Urban Hymns (Virgin), that when the Wigan, England, space-rock poppers self-detonated upon the album’s release in 1997, it was tough to fathom such a towering force receding from view, never to be seen or heard again.

Even now, more than a full decade later, Urban Hymns gives the same skin-prickling goodness in each and every one of my digits as it did on the day I brought it home from the record store – and I doubt I’m alone in that assertion, based on how deeply the recording seemed to resonate in the psyches of listeners on both sides of the Atlantic. Hit albums and singles – as ubiquitous as they feel at the time of their success – come and go, often drifting out of the public consciousness only months after striking it big. Urban Hymns was much more than a mere hit. Rather, it was a proclamation of importance, a manifesto mighty enough for instant mythology.

Lest you’ve forgotten the sheer humbling grandiosity of this thing, go fetch your copy – and trust me, if you ever drew solace and hope from music back in the ’90s, you surely have one sitting in your stacks – and let the disc’s opening string-streaked fanfare of the zeitgeist-defining “Bitter Sweet Symphony” whisk you back to the exact moment you first stopped dead in your tracks and thought, “I can’t believe how good this is.”

Man, oh, man: Menomena at the Independent

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The men o’ Menomena. Photo by Alicia J. Rose.

Menomena
Sept. 20, Independent

By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

Menomena’s music is a serene reverie of looped and layered guitars, capricious drumming, intrusive saxophone sounds, and slightly offbeat lyrics contributed by all three members: Brent Knopf, Justin Harris, and Danny Seim. Tracks spiral out from their introductory piano chords and buoyant drum beats, creating increasingly complex rhythms only to switch erratically and fork off into an entirely different direction. Some tracks capture this effect more successfully than others, dragging the listener along with the 90-degree turns, yet somehow Menomena’s melodious and moody sound works on both their albums – they have three long-players to date – and in concert.

On stage, the band inevitably transforms the recorded songs, loosing some of the complicated and complex layers while still maintaining a playful energy with clapping and tambourines.

In the studio, the outfit’s musical process begins with a computer program designed by Knopf called Deeler, which is short for Digital Looping Recorder. Drummer-vocalist Danny Seim creates the initial beat by playing a drum track. The three members take turns listening to the tempo and meter, improvising more patterns and melodies, and passing the microphone, while recording everything they play. Using the files like a jigsaw puzzle, they fit them together – duplicating some, rearranging the order, trimming pieces, layering parts, and creating an overall song structure. For the final recording, the music morphs again, as Menomena capture the magic created in the Deeler sessions but then performs the parts again, live.

Naked funk? Get on the Gravy Train!!!!

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

If you want to see naked ladies and full-tilt dick, then Gravy Train!!! – one exclamation point for each member of the band – has the show for you. Members of the Oakland fourpiece almost always get outta-hand and nude onstage while serving up their saucy sounds. Chunx, Hunx, Junx, and Funx take turns on guitar, bass, keyboard, and vocals, and usually prance onstage wearing neon-pink spandex, fishnets, or feather boas. If all goes well, they’ll be wearing less than that by the end of their set.

Electropop is the name of Gravy Train!!!!’s game, and while not brilliant, their catchy sound sports lyrics that run the gamut, from advocating boning high school boys to the frustrations of men with petite wieners. Their raps are particularly impressive, and include such clever rhymes as “I had some 40z on my mind when I woke up this mornin’ / I was sick of fancy drinks from the bitches I’d been bonin’ / Wanted to get trashed, lay down and drink my stash / Get up and make a quick dash then bat my fuckin’ eyelash / At the big nasty bottle of the shit I drink / You may call me a ghetto freak but I won’t even blink / Don’t even try to contain the 40z that I drain / I leave a malt liquor stain like a fucking freight train” (“Sippin 40z”).

SF metal band Animosity breaks out

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By Jen Snyder

Thank Lucifer that people are still putting their bodies out on stages and their egos on the line for reasons that make them seem as masochistic as they are talented. Here in San Francisco, we’re lucky to have a multifaceted creative milieu that, more often than not and sometimes unintentionally, works independently of the mainstream.

As an avid indie-show-goer, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing many of the same faces swapped in and out of bands and projects. What’s interesting to me, however, is not just the underappreciated indie scene, but also lesser-known rock ‘n’ roll communities. Today, I wanna talk about independent metal, and the journey of Animosity, one of SF’s finest and most distinctive metal bands.

I sat down with Leo Miller at the headquarters for Man Alive, the label that Miller and Ryan Brewster pioneered here in the city. Miller, 22, is the vocalist for Animosity, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the way he looks. He’s wearing a “Don’t ask me for shit” T-shirt and looks like a fairly clean-cut guy, not someone who screams verbal blood into a microphone in front of a crowd of people angrily pumping the goat horn hand gesture.

4OneFunk take scratch music to the Monterey Jazz Festival

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By Billy Jam

Initially disdained and dismissed by most as just mere noise, not music, the hip-hop-originated practice of scratching, that originated in a Bronx bedroom in the 1970s when Grand Wizzard Theodore accidentally stumbled upon the then new sound, sure has come a long way in a few short decades. Now elevated to the recognized artform commonly known as turntablism, scratch music has even become a course at the Berklee School of Music, “Turntable Technique.”

And at this year’s Monterey Jazz Festival (Sept. 19-21) the festival’s curators are unveiling a new stage, added specifically for DJs and turntablists who incorporate traditional jazz instrumentation into their sound. This new stage’s main act will be San Francisco turntablist group 4OneFunk, who are scheduled to perform, in an extended lineup, each day of the festival.

The 4OneFunk Band‘s festival lineup will include Colin Brown on live synths and Austin Bohlman and Patrick Korty aka Pdub on drums, Teeko on Controller One Turntable and MPC, Max Kane on Controller One Turntable and Vocoder, Ian McDonald on guitar, and Alphabet Soup’s Kenny Brooks on sax. The ensemble will heavily utilize the newly created Vestax turntable model Controller One, which group member DJ Teeko, along with DJs D-Styles and Ricci Rucker, among others, designed for the Japanese turntable manufacturer. Both 4OneFunk’s Teeko and DJ Max Kane will be rocking this new turntable, which Teeko says is taking turntablism into, “a new phase of melodics and control.”

Sonic Reducer Overage: My Morning Jacket, Common/NERD, Menomena, and so much more

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Shadow shag: My Morning Jacket’s “One Big Holiday.”

Feeling frisky, SF? There’s plenty to do besides Treasure Island Music Festival this week – more than we could fit betwixt our hot pages.

THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES
Prog, math, post-punk – whatev, dude. The Seattle collection of players from Botch, Kill Sadie, and Nineironspitfire is just as aggro as it’s ever been, from the sound of the upcoming CD, Tail Swallower & Dove (Suicide Squeeze). Wed/17, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.


HIEROGLYPHICS
Photons, gather round. The onetime Bay Area party-starters return to the scene of some many rhymes. Thurs/18, 8 p.m., $26.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-TIXS.

Mugwumpin ‘n’ denial: it’s not just a river in Egypt

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By Robert Avila

In October, local performance company mugwumpin – a kinetic and fervidly experimental ensemble that does not shy from being highly entertaining, too – travels to the massive Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre.

There it will represent the US with a newer, leaner version of its 2006 deconstruction of the American hero complex, super:anti:reluctant. Those who can’t afford the trip can catch this singular piece of post-abstract expressionist theater during a special three-show run at Noh Space this weekend, before it heads east.

super:anti:reluctant
Preview Fri/19, 8 p.m., $10; gala performance and artist reception Sat/20, 8 p.m., $25; final performance Sun/21, 8 p.m., $12-$20 sliding scale
NOHspace
2840 Mariposa, SF
(415) 621-7978

George Clinton, Les Claypool for NYE and checking out the new Warfield

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The Clinton dynasty: George Clinton plays the Warfield on New Year’s Eve.

Welcome the new in – and usher the old out. George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic will ring in 2009 on New Year’s Eve at the Warfield, and Les Claypool will tackle Zappa at the War Memorial Opera House, courtesy of Goldenvoice/AEG Live – this I learned while taking a quick tour of the revamped Warfield late last week with Dave Lefkowitz, VP of booking, and Joan Rosenberg, director of marketing.

Crews were still scrambling to complete renovations in time for this past weekend’s performances with George Lopez. But the top-o’-the-line, new sound system from Meyer Sound was in place, as was a lighting trellis that will allow touring bands to get creative and bring in their own setups. Nifty new switcheroos include the departure of the mixing board from the balcony, down to the first floor, and the addition of a bank of 30 new primo-viewing seats upstairs, and the savvy move of shifting two bars on the first floor in the main room – one away from an emergency exit. The inclusion of six speakers mid-house, downstairs, should definitely improve the sound for the attendees in the back and in the VIP boxes.

Photos of past shows from Wolfgang’s Vault and other sources lined the walls along with official and underground posters of past Warfield shows: Rosenberg said the walls will showcase a rotating display of the venue’s history. New carpets lined the floors throughout the space, and upstairs, the renovation crew uncovered two old telephone booths from the early part of the 20th century.

Russian folk metalists Arkona punish with pennywhistle

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ARKONA
Ot Serdca K Nebu
(Napalm)

By Kat Renz
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The tumultuous first 60 seconds of “Pokrovy Nebesnogo Startsa,” the second track off Arkona’s fourth studio full-length, Ot Serdca K Nebu, make me proud to be Russian. Is it the war-like chants, the growling Masha “Scream” or the traditional Slavic “Volynka” bagpipes? Maybe it’s the violently pitch-shifted guitars and rapid-fire drums, followed by the sweet cacophony of Eastern European folk instruments lilting through the fusillade?

Then I remember I’m totally not Russian and feel a tad weirdly nationalistic. But for ethnomusicologists with an open mind toward the heavy or headbangers into Viking metal like Tyr, Arkona’s epic tribute to Russian ecology and pre-Christian battle gods tempers the uber-patriotic ideology of the Slavic world’s most well-known “Rodnovery” (“native faith”) metal band.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Bad Plus, Anthony Brown, Jennifer O’Connor, more

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Snared: Bad Plus smell like teen spirit in Argentina.

Yep, the fact that Sept. 11 landed on a Tuesday didn’t deter many a musical artist from dropping their latest – so don’t let it make you stay home. And now for a few more intriguing shows, all happening this week…



BAD PLUS
Sound familiar? Sound like “Teen Spirit” or “Tom Sawyer”? The trio feels the tuck o’ the past. Wed/10, 8 and 10 p.m., $10-$16. Yoshi’s SF, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600.

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GENERALISSIMO
The Oakland army leads a “Reeducation Demonstration” with what they describe as “high concept, high modernist broken rock,” and compare to both Queens of the Stone Age and North Korea’s Mass Games. Yet mommy just called it “acid rock.” With Mariana Trench and Pegataur. Wed/10, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk St., SF. (415) 923-0923.

New mission, dance moves for Hank IV

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All hail, Hank IV. Vocalist Bob McDonald completed successful knee surgery earlier this year on a torn ACL from a Bottom of the Hill show: Bandmate Anthony Bedard tells me, “On surgeon’s orders, he’s had to alter his ‘Robbie the Robot meets Ian Curtis’ style of dancing” in favor of a more stand-and-deliver strategy.

The SF combo will also see their new Siltbreeze album, Refuge in Genre, recorded with Tim Green earlier this summer, come out in October — and then there’s Hank IV‘s latest mission: opening for Mission of Burma (playing Signals, Calls, and Marches and Vs. start to finish) throughout Cali, including Sept. 26 and 27 at the Independent.

HANK IV
With Mission of Burma
Sept. 26 (Signals, Calls, and Marches) and Sept. 27 (Vs.), 9 p.m. $20-$35
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421

Tailing the Fringe: more plays to catch

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By Rob Avila

Here are a few plays especially worth checking out at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, but premiering too late for review: For more, see “Knuckballin’.”

Exit Sign: A Rock Opera
SF musician and songwriter Carrie Baum’s autobiographical flight, glimpsed over the weekend, has some sentimental aspects but is frequently inspired, tuneful, heartfelt, and good fun. Showcasing a solid band headed up by Baum and her Gibson SG, two charming backup singers, and good acting-singing performances in the lead roles of a cool couch-potato father (a winningly down-to-earth Steffanos X) and his queer daughter (a sure and impressive Jamie Ben-Azay) on a TV-mandated mission to find “It” before an untimely death makes for one of life’s inevitable detours.

The Evelyn Reese Show
If Amy Sedaris were from Toronto, the town might not be big enough for her and Susan Fischer, whose character, the irrepressible Evelyn Reese, is a pitch-perfect social monster of hilariously garish proportions. At the same time, the skillful Fischer keeps her character solidly grounded in the most realistic idiosyncrasies; it’s hyperbolic but never anything but believable. And that’s what’s so terrifying.

The discreet musical charms of ‘Hallam Foe’

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Various artists
Hallam Foe: Original Soundtrack
(Domino)

By Todd Lavoie

Some things take a mighty long time to wash up on American shores from abroad. Take Hallam Foe – the British independent film was released last year overseas, but is only now beginning to hit stateside screens, thanks to a distribution deal with Magnolia Pictures. (For whatever reason, the delightfully odd little gem has been re-titled Mister Foe for the American market.)

Trust me: this film’s worth the wait. Charming but occasionally unsettling, whimsical but rippling with currents of darkness, it’s engrossing as hell, and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) is riveting as the troubled young man in the title role. In any case, I’m here to focus on the music – and the soundtrack is a wonderful, headphone-hugging treat. Keeping the original title of the film despite the name change on the marquee, the disc works flawlessly as the score to such a curious mix of sweetness and foreboding. Even without the accompanying visuals, these 16 songs link together to sustain a devilishly peculiar mood over the course of an hour. A fine tribute, then, to a film which whirls love into death, innocence into obsession, cuteness into the grotesque.

Hallam Foe takes place mainly in two locations: the rolling hills and ice-cold lochs of the Scottish countryside, and the rooftops and lookout spots above Edinburgh. The soundtrack does an impressive job of conveying both landscapes, sliding skillfully from agrarian folk to pavement-hitting electronics and lurching big-city rock ‘n’ roll. Maybe “sliding” isn’t the right term – “gliding” might be more appropriate, given the film’s focus on Hallam wanting to be above it all, looking down from great heights. Many of the songs contained here are buoyed along by a sense of weightlessness: rhythms wash in and wash out, synth blips and bleeps soar in the highest registers, and occasionally disembodied voices hover and hum somewhere in the vague distance.

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