It will be
films galore from Wednesday as the East End film festival gets under way. The six
day festival will be showing a huge number of documentaries in a load of
different places, the big ticket attraction being a new documentary on The
Libertines. On a personal note I’m hoping to grab a ticket to ‘Good Times’. A
film which charts one man’s journey to spread ‘Sound System Culture’ to the
wider world through the Notting Hill Carnival.
Alternatively
I'll try and see ‘Furious Force of Rhymes’. A film which spreads light on the “rebellious
and controversial" language of hip-hop music from Israel to Columbia.
Here are
some of my favourite musical docs.
Happy Easter
No Direction
Home:
Charting the
career of the great Bob Dylan the film, directed by Scorcese, goes from his beginnings
in a small town, to his journey to New York to discover himself and his music
to his subsequent superstardom upon the release of ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’.
The best
thing about this is the how it exposes the political nature of folk music. My favourite scene in the whole film is when Bob Dylan plays a
music festival with electric guitars. The elderly Pete Seeger, outraged at what
he perceives to be crime against folk music, tries to unplug the whole thing. The
‘electrification’ of Dylan’s music is a touchy subject indeed. Did it betray
the music? Did it open it up to new people? Did it evolve the genre? Debate,
eh.
Heima:
I don’t
really cry at films but Heima, the story of an epic homeland tour conducted by
Sigur Ros, really got to me. Their
homeland of Iceland comes across on film as a beautiful place which the band really
seem connected to. Even some of the instruments that the band used on their
tour were taken from local mountains.
You get a
sense throughout that the band are rooted to the landscape, that they draw
inspiration from it and that they miss it, not only because they are coming home
from an extended time away touring but also the landscape is changing. Old communities
are dying out and big business is now ruining the landscape.
It made
Iceland and the band seem quaint but inspirational and heart warming as well. The climax in Reykjavik
is great.
Total Life Forever//Foals//:
Directed by
Dave Ma (known lately for the new Wild Beast vid), this is more montage than
documentary. The great thing about this is that it lets you in on the mechanics
of an album; the album in question being one of my recent favourites, Total Life Forever.
It starts in a
house in Oxford as the band lay down some of the early riffs on tracks such as
Spanish Sahara and takes us through to their time in the Svenska Grammafon
studios outside Gothenberg in Sweden. Visually the environment of a studio,
compared to say the epicness of Iceland, could be a bit of a stale backdrop,
but the whole thing can keep your attention even if you’re not a fan of their
music as you see the meticulousness that’s needed to put an album
together. This is shown brilliantly by a guitarist tapping furiously at notes
on the floor expecting the singers to replicate (Which to be fair they do, resulting in the excellent opening to This Orient).
Jerusalem,
Israel in general is not known for its underground music scene. Shame, really.
Bunny On Acid
is 26 year old Izik Finley who took on the name and the sound as a result of
an eye opening stint in Brixton, England – they too have an underground scene y’know.
He brings
the Britishness of Drum and Bass, Dub and Garage to the heat of the Levant. And
good on him too. His blend of sounds makes for good dance music which doesn’t
do the whole ambient thing but rather gets you up on your feet.
His new
album, ‘A Way Back Home,’ is out towards the end of the year on Holy Dubs
Recordings.
If folk
music sounds new, fresh, off –beat and like nothing you’ve ever heard before
then it’s probably being done wrong. Hurray For The Riff is led by Alynda Lee
Segarra, the songs are old and familiar and the whole album would be difficult to place
in a specific time.
The band and
the leading lady are a rag – tag bunch, and in true Americana style, so are the
influences; the rich tapestry of the southern United States with jazz and folk
and vaudeville and blues all making an appearance.
Hailing from
Auckland, New Zealand, Jocee Tuck has the sort of elegiac voice that will lead
to visions of the Cathedral. The voice has power and strength to it – no doubt
about it, but there are no obligatory confessions this time.
The sense of the other
worldly is more dreamy, rooted in a sense of fantasy coming from the delights
of nature. This is demonstrated with lyrics such as “Fly me little bird, fly me
home tonight.”
Even thousands of
miles of away, from my hovel in urban London, the small town, light summer
charms of Blenheim, the town which she grew up in, do come through.
Incidentally, the
area in which she grew up in is (according to Wikipedia) at the centre of New
Zealand’s wine country. Pinot Noir would go well with this.
It has to be said, there aren’t many people blending
muscular Zionism and Rap. A few, but not many. Matisyahu, the Jewish rapper, may be too big an artist to
fit into the self imposed remit of ‘new music’ that I have put on the blog (his
debut album, Youth, was a success) but still I like him enough to make an
exception. And plus he makes a nice segway into Israeli music, a corner of the
world that will be overrepresented in this blog in the future.
He has just released a new live album, Live at Stubbs volume
II. Below is a song from that album.