Labels: ArkNoise Recordings
Review by: Captain Fidanza
This is great.
Like most things, the art of the film soundtrack reached its zenith in the 1970s, where instead of just compiling a sequence of indie hits from the last decade of the last century and pasting them over the top of scenes, filmmakers would commission a score to accompany the images, rather than simply act as a marketing tool for the undiscerning.
Every once in a while a filmmaker comes along who understands and appreciates the power of the soundtrack and before he started making big-budget shit for idiots, David Gordon Green made a trilogy of films between 2000 and 2004 which illustrate how he was once the master of this art.
These three films (George Washington, All the Real Girls and Undertow) are extraordinary pieces of work all soundtracked by Michael Linnen and David Wingo. The music in these films is something few would immediately remember, but without which the entire experience of the film itself would be significantly less.
I recognise that it’s dumb and crass and lazy to talk about instrumental bands in terms of film soundtracks, but the quieter moments amongst the seven songs on this album brought to mind the delicate simplicity of those early David Gordon Green films to such an extent that it was impossible not to reference them.
The louder moments on display here are equally impressive, balancing the complete work brilliantly whilst all the time ensuring the overall experience does not descend into an exercise in passive appreciation (which listening to some of the bands referenced on the press-release certainly does).
There is a quiet confidence on display here which comes only from knowing that you are creating the thing you wanted to create without recourse to compromise. In this sense, this album is also something which can be compared to those early David Gordon Green films which promised so much and appeared to herald the arrival of a unique and distinct vision which, although unlikely to find significant commercial appeal, would go on to produce films which people would still talk fondly of twenty or thirty years down the line. I don’t imagine anybody was talking about “Your Highness” twenty or thirty minutes after that was released, so Green has clearly traded the purity of his early vision for the promise of wealth and the assurance of mediocrity. Perhaps this rare sort of confidence only takes you so far.
It’s rare that I find myself so completely taken with one of the cds I intermittently receive through the post from Collective, but this one caught me completely unaware and although it’s not perhaps as immediate as other albums I have been sent over the last year or so, this is the first one I have recommended to people I know with a sincere suggestion they visit the Sunwolf bandcamp and purchase either the physical or digital release for just £5.
sunwolfuk.bandcamp.com/releases
Go on, do it.