Mike Slott's live score for The Return: no returns

 

I bought some Edinburgh Fringe tickets last week and, in my excitement, have been looking back to last year's Festival. I reviewed this Mike Slott event for The Skinny and it was actually one of my highlights, if only because the film itself is so good. There was nothing wrong with the new score really, it was just completely unnecessary.

Mike Slott- The Return

Summerhall Main Hall

13/8/11

**

It's hardly rare for musicians to provide live accompaniment to feature films, but New York-based producer Mike Slott has taken a real risk in composing a soundtrack to 2003's Russian award winner The Return. Made 76 years after the death of silent cinema, it's fairly dialogue-heavy and already boasts a score courtesy of Andrei Dergachyov, a man whose work is so suited to director Andrei Zvyagintsev's vision that they would collaborate again on 2007's The Banishment.

The Return's original soundtrack is unobtrusive and chilling, its sense of gentle foreboding driving the picture toward its tragically inevitable climax. By contrast, Slott's composition seems painted by numbers. Underwater sequences elicit electronic new-age ambience from the Irish expatriate, while tensions between characters are highlighted by abrupt, thudding bass. When at his least heavy-handed, Slott simply calls Dergachyov's score to mind.

There are occasional moments when we witness a near perfect marriage between music and cinematography, particularly during scenes depicting childhood innocence. These instances, however, have no accumulative effect and amount to little more than an incoherent series of classy music videos. Though obviously a talented fellow, Slott has failed to see the bigger picture on this occasion.

Lewis Porteous

The Blood Arm: amputate these muthas

In my recent Mike Nisbet post, I mention being sent a few albums to review by The Skinny’s music editor back in June. This write-up made it to the paper, but in a slightly bastardised form.  I state in the original piece that an endorsement from Franz Ferdinand “decreases in value with each passing year”. As far as I’m concerned, this is an objective fact; the group aren’t as popular or influential as they were in 2005. That you can buy their three albums for a penny each on Amazon speaks volumes. They’re still an alright band and I’d rather they were viable chart contenders than the tedious Tory Folk practitioners that are so popular right now. But they’re not and must be aware of this themselves. So why change the line to “an endorsement which may or may not be decreasing in value with each passing year,” making me seem like even more of a spineless shilly-shallier than I already am? I can only presume that The Skinny, which seeks to promote Scottish ephemera, feels that it owes the band some kind of debt. God knows The Blood Arm do. Original review here.

The Blood Arm 'Turn and Face Me'
**
 As one would expect of Franz Ferdinand's favourite band, an endorsement which decreases in value with each passing year, LA’s The Blood Arm are pop-loving art rockers. Staunch Anglophiles, they draw inspiration from the mainstream British New Wave and are happy to wear their influences on their sleeves.

'She's a Guillotine' opens the album with a tribal beat clearly intended as a nod to Adam Ant, before exploding into the kind of aggressively melodic, keyboard coated power-pop that was once Elvis Costello's stock in trade. Somehow the song finds room for an impassioned call and response coda in the vein of Dexys before its two and a half minutes are up. At its best, as on this track, 'The Creditors' and the more thoughtful 'Forever is Strange', the group's music is invigorating and cleverly constructed. Generally though, it's too cluttered and self-conscious to make much of an impression on the listener.

Lewis Porteous

Mike Nisbet: vague rant

When I contacted The Skinny's music editor last summer, he agreed to let me to cover some new releases with such haste that he couldn't possibly have read any samples of my work beforehand. He asked for a list of records that I'd recently bought and sent me some stylistically similar promos. Least exciting of them all was the debut album by Mike Nisbet which was already out by the time I received it. The review was never published to my knowledge, and sank without a trace just like Vagrant itself. Here it is. It's nothing too interesting, though I'd have been proud to have slipped a mention of Fred Neil into the paper.

Mike Nisbet 'Vagrant'
***

Recording his debut album under the auspices of Marcus Mackay, Mike Nisbet appears primed for a commercial breakthrough to rival those of the producer's previous clients Snow Patrol and Frightened Rabbit.

Funded by Creative Scotland, Vagrant is a largely low key affair, the artist striving to present his songs to the listener in as direct a fashion as possible. It can't be said that Nisbet is a singer/songwriter endowed with a particularly unique world view or approach to composition. Indeed, 'Free Man''s persistent, nagging chorus is particularly uninspired, while the monosyllabic rhymes of 'El Frida' suggest a lyricist working on autopilot. Nisbet's strength instead lies in his performances, his shimmering guitar work and robust vocals exuding an authority rare in someone of his relatively young age. When combined, these assets render the self-aggrandizing 'Indestructible' charming and elevate prime material such as 'Not Long' and 'Rolling Thunder' to levels of breezy intensity that call to mind the great Fred Neil.

Lewis Porteous