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British Sea Power - Man Of Aran OST
| Nme |
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Remember that old 1930s fictitious documentary Man Of Aran that follows a family’s daily struggles to survive on the forbidding Aran Islands? Nah, me neither, but trust the pioneering nautical juggernaut that is BSP to stumble upon it and think it worthy of a new soundtrack. Stunning black-and-white shots of a foreboding sky, vertiginous cliffs and a treacherous sea are interspersed with that of a heroic yet slightly farcical family (check out their fantastically giant bobbled berets) slipping on rocks and being slapped by waves, while tirelessly hunting basking sharks with spears and trying to grow potatoes on bare rock. Aurally transporting you into this bleak and bizarre netherworld is a predominantly instrumental BSP, who seem to have found their perfect emotional parallel in the stark landscape and crashing waves – strings swirl like a building storm, gentle scraps of white noise hiss like the wind and drums rumble like distant thunder. On standout track ‘Come Wander With Me’, heart-wrenching violins unfurl to reveal dense, dreamy rhythms, hushed funereal horns and layers of ghostly, choral vocals reminiscent of Grizzly Bear’s ‘Marla’. There’s a palpable vastness and a hushed reverence to the album that allows tracks time to simmer and smoke before they fire. The pace builds slowly like a wave, from the uplifting waltzing rhythms of ‘The Currach’, through the starry guitar epic ‘Boy Vertiginous’, on to the 12-minute My Bloody Valentine-style freak-out of ‘Spearing The Fish’, before crashing back down to its former languorous pace. This isn’t an album you can dip into; instead dive in and sink to the bottom and let it all gloriously wash over you....full text |
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| Urb |
| Citing Robert Flaherty’s 1934 documentary film of the same name as its primary influence, British Sea Power create a lavish and expansive soundtrack to the Irish docufiction, Man of Aran in its evocation of the plight of an Irish fisherman family intimately co-existing with the rawness of nature. BSP foreground the depth and power of the ocean as a source of life for the fisherman family, and acoustically consume the audience of the album through its profound and intelligent construction. As the introduction to the film describes, “It is a fight from which he (the fisherman) will have no respite until the end of his indomitable days or until he meets his master—the sea.” This highly poetic and gracefulness clearly shines through in the title track “Man of Aran,” which sets the tone for the entire 73 minutes and 28 second experience. This monumental characterization of the ocean as the final frontier becomes identifiable in the tender composition of BSP in tracks such as “The South Sound” and “The North Sound” as they seek to be the cartographers of the island system. BSP explore the texture of sound and the pairing of film with music, expertly playing with tropes of rhythm, space and silence, combining and melting them into one another into an ethereality characterized by beauty, texture, and skilled instrumentation....full text |
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| Musicomh |
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British Sea Power's third, Mercury-nominated album Do You Like Rock Music? undoubtedly gave the Brighton quintet a higher profile, though concerned a few long term fans in its stylistic move towards the stadium, even if the lyrics themselves still dealt with familiar band topics such as the environment. Man Of Aran, to some extent, reminds us that the 'Rock' in that album's title was more about an island than a style of music. For this is a soundtrack to a 1934 black and white film, recently performed live by the band at the National Film Theatre as part of Ether 09. The film itself is available here on an accompanying DVD, which is important - as without the images the music itself is at times inconsequential. That said, as far as setting a mood goes it is extremely effective, and often poignant. Spearing The Sunfish is a stark evocation of an animal's pain, and is all the more remarkable in the way it starts, through the voice of a single, distorted guitar. The rolling drums that follow come from the depths of the earth itself, as if the planet itself is gathered in protest....full text |
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