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Lee Ranaldo: Music for Stage and Screen Don't be misled by the title's theatre and film associations; the nineteen selections comprising Music for Stage and Screen aren't traditionally composed and orchestrally scored pieces but pretty much what you might expect from the Sonic Youth guitarist: instrumental, explorative, and occasionally atonal settings that sound as if they originated from improv sessions and subsequently were shaped into the final constructions. Some of the material exudes a haunting, ghostly quality befitting the subject matter for which it was created (an Italian theatrical adaptation of Dostoevsky's Demons is one of the four projects for which the music was created, with the others two theatre works and one film). Though Ranaldo's joined by fellow guitarist Alan Licht, drummer William Hooker, Christian Marclay on turntables, and Gunter Muller on percussion and electronics, the emphasis is on guitar textures, electronics, and woozy turntable effects . Many of the selections are brief, with some used in multiple contexts (“The Fire” appearing in three of the four) and some individual spotlights (“Spider” and “Evolution of Sirens” emphasize Marclay's turntablism). The album is carefully sequenced so that its last third inhabits more becalmed territory, the exceptions being “War,” with its spacey electronic whirrs and guitar scars, squabbles, and stabs, and the closer “The Black Light,” a drumless setting of guitar scrapes, electronic noises, and turntables. Quieter moments arise in the ambient oasis “Dance of the Coats,” “Mariais delirium,” and “Gilles de Rais (Barbablù),” a gentle setting of tinklings, electronics, and subtle turntable effects. And though Hooker is a presence on one track only, the eight-minute noisefest “Sciatov Assassins,” he definitely makes it a lasting one. May 2005 |
