An alternative soundtrack...
Consider us intrigued.
Earlier this month an email popped into the ClashMusic Inbox, informing us of a new project from excitable indie sorts Peggy Sue. Seemingly the band had decided to cover the soundtrack of Kenneth Anger's classic film 'Scorpio Rising', a score which will gain official release later this year.
Only 1000 physical copies will be available, with 'Scorpio Rising' also set to be released digitally. Clash sent across some questions to Peggy Sue in order to find out more - here's what they had to say.
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Can you tell us more about 'Scorpio Rising'?
'Scorpio Rising' is an avant-garde film from the 1960's made by influential cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger. It's a pretty controversial 30 minutes of cinema and was banned in LA when it was first released in 1963 but it has incredible visuals and an amazing soundtrack of pop songs.
Why cover the soundtrack?
Katy first saw 'Scorpio Rising' during her film degree and thought it would be amazing to perform the soundtrack live along to the film. We've always been drawn to the idea of re-scoring a film or writing a soundtrack but since lyrics and vocals are so central to our music the idea was pretty intimidating. In 'Scorpio Rising' there is no dialogue and no title cards so the story is essentially told entirely by the visuals but Anger uses the lyrics of the pop songs to confirm or alter the meaning of the images. This is a very common technique now but that disconnection of image/sound was quite groundbreaking at the time and is a central device in avant garde film. So for us this was the perfect way to interact with a piece of important cinema and hopefully draw some new attention to it.
So how did this come about?
In the summer of last year some friends of ours called Assemble were curating a film/live music program at a temporary cinema in Hackney and asked if we wanted to take part. We jumped at the chance and then spent near enough a month re-writing the songs from the original soundtrack and making the new arrangements fit to changes in the film. Some of the cover versions are quite faithful renditions but some we went off on a bit of a tangent. The show was supposed to be a one-off but we had such a good time and we were so proud of the collection of songs we'd created we decided to record them as an album - a sort of unofficial soundtrack. We did this here and there whilst we were home from tour and finally finished it in February.
Is it true that you've crafted videos for each track?
Yes. Although this is very much a work in progress. Kenneth Anger's lawyer type people are not very enthusiastic about us performing with the film which is pretty sad so we are making new visuals. It's pretty interesting though because a lot of avant-garde cinema is about borrowing and recycling so whilst the performance becomes a sort of homage to Anger's original film which in turn was a homage to the music and imagery which inspired it.
- - -
'Scorpio Rising' will be released on July 23rd.
Earlier this month an email popped into the ClashMusic Inbox, informing us of a new project from excitable indie sorts Peggy Sue. Seemingly the band had decided to cover the soundtrack of Kenneth Anger's classic film 'Scorpio Rising', a score which will gain official release later this year.
Only 1000 physical copies will be available, with 'Scorpio Rising' also set to be released digitally. Clash sent across some questions to Peggy Sue in order to find out more - here's what they had to say.
- - -
Can you tell us more about 'Scorpio Rising'?
'Scorpio Rising' is an avant-garde film from the 1960's made by influential cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger. It's a pretty controversial 30 minutes of cinema and was banned in LA when it was first released in 1963 but it has incredible visuals and an amazing soundtrack of pop songs.
Why cover the soundtrack?
Katy first saw 'Scorpio Rising' during her film degree and thought it would be amazing to perform the soundtrack live along to the film. We've always been drawn to the idea of re-scoring a film or writing a soundtrack but since lyrics and vocals are so central to our music the idea was pretty intimidating. In 'Scorpio Rising' there is no dialogue and no title cards so the story is essentially told entirely by the visuals but Anger uses the lyrics of the pop songs to confirm or alter the meaning of the images. This is a very common technique now but that disconnection of image/sound was quite groundbreaking at the time and is a central device in avant garde film. So for us this was the perfect way to interact with a piece of important cinema and hopefully draw some new attention to it.
So how did this come about?
In the summer of last year some friends of ours called Assemble were curating a film/live music program at a temporary cinema in Hackney and asked if we wanted to take part. We jumped at the chance and then spent near enough a month re-writing the songs from the original soundtrack and making the new arrangements fit to changes in the film. Some of the cover versions are quite faithful renditions but some we went off on a bit of a tangent. The show was supposed to be a one-off but we had such a good time and we were so proud of the collection of songs we'd created we decided to record them as an album - a sort of unofficial soundtrack. We did this here and there whilst we were home from tour and finally finished it in February.
Is it true that you've crafted videos for each track?
Yes. Although this is very much a work in progress. Kenneth Anger's lawyer type people are not very enthusiastic about us performing with the film which is pretty sad so we are making new visuals. It's pretty interesting though because a lot of avant-garde cinema is about borrowing and recycling so whilst the performance becomes a sort of homage to Anger's original film which in turn was a homage to the music and imagery which inspired it.
- - -
'Scorpio Rising' will be released on July 23rd.
