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SEEING IS BELIEVING Neil Cooper draws together an array of creative strands as musicians create their own live soundtracks to films on the Fringe
E dinburgh International Film Festival may have shifted operations to June, but that doesn’t mean the left-over spirit of its maverick music strand Mirrorball is lacking in August. Performing live soundtracks to silent movies has become de rigeur over the last few years for more adventurous artists lending an aural ambience to onscreen images that go beyond MTV gloss.
Former Siouxsie and the Banshees bassist and composer Steven Severin is one of the more creative aficionados of such ventures, as his live laptop score to a programme of surrealist shorts old and new, premiered in Edinburgh in 2008, bore witness to. Over four successive Saturdays, Severin will perform a quartet of different treatments of a score to German expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. These shows form the late-night flagship events of the Bang Bang Club, Edinburgh’s regular speak-easy showcase for live acts which throughout August takes up residence in the grand surroundings of Edinburgh University’s student union building.
Noah and the Whale won’t be playing live in Edinburgh to launch their second album The First Days of Spring, though band member Charlie Fink will be in attendance to introduce the screening of a film of the same name that accompanies the record. A live element will, however, be much in evidence at Playing with the Past, at which bands Eagleowl, Mersault and Found will play sets to accompany pioneering archive material sourced from the Scottish Screen archive. This latest screening is a repeat showing of work first aired during this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, and is back by popular demand. While all the bands have radically
different approaches, anyone who has seen any of Eagleowl’s Halloween spectaculars playing along to Italian slasher movies will have some idea of just how intense they can be. Finally, Little Sparta, the London-based trio who take their name from Ian Hamilton Finlay’s famed garden, will give three performances of their impressionistic score to Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Ahmed. The original negative of the world’s oldest animated film was destroyed at the end of World War Two, but an almost complete version kept in the British Film Institute’s National Film and Television Archive was lovingly restored to its former glory. These screenings of a magical tale taken from The Arabian Nights will mark the end of the August tenure of the nomadic art space the Grey Gallery at upmarket bar Hawke and Hunter as part of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival. Grey Gallery curator Susie Honeyman plays violin with both Little Sparta and country punk veterans The Mekons, and will be joined by guitarist Alan Boyd and drummer Scott Skinner for the first appearance of Prince Ahmed outside London’s alternative cabaret circuit.
Steven Severin – The Trials of Dr Caligari, Gilded Balloon, 622 6552, 7, 14, 21 & 28 Aug, 12.30am, £10; Noah and The Whale – The First Days of Spring, Cameo Cinema, 0871 704 2052, 10 Aug, 9pm, £tbc; Playing with the Past, Filmhouse, 22 Aug, 9pm, £tbc; Little Sparta and The Adventures of Prince Ahmed, The Grey Gallery @ Hawke and Hunter, 28–30 Aug, 6pm, £tbc.
PERFORMING LIVE SOUNDTRACKS TO SILENT MOVIES HAS BECOME DE RIGEUR
ONE MAN ARMY
Stewart Smith salutes the singular genius of Billy Childish
‘Your paintings are stuck. You are stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck!’ said Tracy Emin of former boyfriend Billy Childish. In response the artist, writer and garage rocker founded the Stuckist art movement, rejecting the conceptual practice of his erstwhile BritArt chums in favour of representational and expressionist painting. Some would say Childish’s music is similarly stuck, an endless series of variations on a narrow set of influences. Yet working within strict parameters is a key feature of Childish’s art and, thanks to his sheer talent and personality, it pays dividends. As Archive From 1959, an
excellent new compilation spanning his 32-year career, attests, Childish’s music is surprisingly diverse. There’s snotty punk rock, amped-up R&B, ragged folk and blues, wild freakbeat and even slinky Gallic girl-pop. He’s often laugh-out-loud funny, shamelessly rewriting The Premiers’ classic garage stomp ‘Farmer John’ as a sexual lampoon of Davey Crockett or satirising America’s founding myths in ‘Cowboys Are Square’. The searingly honest accounts of an abusive childhood that feature in his novels and poetry are reflected in songs such as ‘The Night I Beat My Father Up’ and the grimly sarcastic ‘Christmas 1979’, possibly the least festive Yuletide single ever released. Everyone from Kurt Cobain to Kylie
Minogue has praised Childish’s music, but when The White Stripes’ admiration for his work was not reciprocated, Jack White threw a hissy fit. ‘It all smacks of jealousy to me,’ Childish responded. ‘I have a bigger collection of hats, a better moustache, a more blistering guitar sound and a fully developed sense of humour.’ Damn straight. If you need any
further convincing, don’t miss this Billy Childish solo blues poetry show, part of Bang Bang Club’s rather splendid Fringe season. Punk rock ist nicht tot! ■ Gilded Balloon, 622 6552, 9 Aug, 12.30am, £12.
44 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 6–13 Aug 2009