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Filmreel News: Father of African Cinema Ousmane Sembène's Films Come to HOME MCR

HOME Manchester's forthcoming film season offers an insight into Senegalese writer, producer and director Ousmane Sembène's prolific record as a filmmaker aiming to represent the marginalised and voiceless in society, revealing why he was awarded the title of the father of African cinema.

Under the banner of Rebel with a Camera, the season comprises four feature-length screenings, ranging from his 1966 debut about a Senegalese childminder who returns with the child's family to the south of France, Black Girl (Sun 9 October), through to the posthumous documentary, Sembène (2012), compiled by his colleague and biographer Samba Gadjigo, along with Jason Silverman. Gadjigo will also be appearing at HOME for a Q&A after the film on Sat 8 October.

The other films during the season are the colonial satire Xala (1975), which will be shown on Thu 20 October, and Sembène's final film before his death in 2007, Moolaadé (2004), which tackles the horrors of FGM and concludes the Manchester season on Mon 24 October.

The programme of his selected works is also touring the UK between October 2016 and January 2017, sharing his catalogue of African stories for African audience with intercontinental viewers. You can catch all four films across from Inverness to various London venues, with other destinations including Sheffield's Showroom, Keswick's Alhambra and Edinburgh's Filmhouse.

Words: Ian Pennington

Rebel with a Camera: The Cinema of Ousmane Sembène runs at HOME from Sat 8 to Mon 24 October, 2016.
homemcr.org

NOW THEN | ISSUE 10 | A MAGAZINE FOR MANCHESTER

We've reached double figures on our tally of printed magazines - you may have already seen Kid Acne's art on the issue 10 cover out and about across the city. Flip over to the back page and you'll see that we've again improved the map thanks to the skills of local design team, Mogul.

Turning the pages, you'll find the words of the people of Manchester on topics ranging between statues, hiking, food, film, theatre, music, charity shops, local history and independent trade, as well as interviews with Stewart Lee, Mr Scruff, Kathika Rabbit and this issue's artist Kid Acne, whose artwork is featured across the magazine. Click the link below for the online version, or pick up your copy now around the city.

Here are our supporters for this issue (in page order). Be independent, buy independent.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY VENUES.
Manchester Academy.

CHORLTON FOOD AND DRINK.
Proof Chorlton.
Morley Cheek's.

INDEPENDENT COFFEE.
The Eighth Day Shop & Cafe.
International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
Passion Fruit Coffee.
MONO Chorlton.

INDEPENDENT ALE.
Outstanding Beers.
Marble Beers.
Electrik / Volta.
Abbeydale Brewery.

CREATIVE MINDS.
Kagyu Ling Buddhist Centre.
East Street Arts.
Manchester Craft & Design Centre: Tactile Illusions vs Sonic Delusions.

EVENTS AND DESIGN.
Opus Distro.
Mogul.
MONO Chorlton.
Party For The People.

FESTIVALS.
Cloudspotting Festival 2014.
Sheffield Doc/Fest.

LIVE MUSIC.
Glasswerk Concerts.
Band On The Wall.

PERFORM AND SUPPORT MUSIC.
Brighter Sound.
MoodWarp Studio.

STUDY DESIGN IN MANCHESTER.
Shillington College.

Hiker Meat and Rough Cut: The Art of Making a Film That Never Existed

How do you explain the unique eccentricity of Hiker Meat, Jamie Shovelin's latest creative enterprise which is currently showcasing at the Cornerhouse in the form of an exhibition and a film, the latter entitled Rough Cut?

Well, it goes a bit like this. Imagine the only cars you liked were luxury cars but rather than build a new one you wanted to create a luxury car that never existed. But you wouldn't create a completely new luxury car you'd just recreate the bits that fascinated you the most, perhaps a walnut and rosewood dashboard (Jaguar), the finest hand crafted Parthenon-styled radiator grille (Rolls Royce) or a hand stitched driver's seat upholstered in the softest calf skin imaginable (Bentley). It would be a master class exploring the craft behind some iconic elements of the best luxury cars ever.

Now transfer this creative process to the horror film genre and you get my drift. Jamie's fantastic creative conceit is to deconstruct some of the key elements of the best of low budget slasher celluloid horror and re-examine every aspect of their aesthetic by recreating them in his own vision.

Rough Cut, and its supporting exhibition, documents the development of the project and its entourage of actors, film crew, sound technicians and set builders, all of whom head en masse to Grizedale in the Lake District. Here, their mission is to recreate a film that never existed by happily drawing upon a plethora of references to over 1,500 film clips from a portfolio of exploitation films produced in the 60s, 70s and 80s that have established the horror genre as more than just a cult, but a filmic language all of its own.

My initial reaction to the whole enterprise was that perhaps this was all a bit self-indulgent, too considered and aware of itself. However, as the film unfolds you begin to realise that Shovelin's forensic approach to understanding the components that make this particular horror genre so compelling is a powerful journey of creative self discovery, and an invaluable resource for film goers and filmmakers alike. The power and the validity of the project come from its obsessive re-examination of the whole process.

Although we never get to see a complete film there is an outline framework of a plot which provides the context in which to explore a range of elements essential to a classic horror film such as location, sound effects, costume, plot development, camera angles, dialogues and the all-important primal scream.

In this instance the plot revolves around hitchhiking girls picked up by truck drivers who lead them to what seems like a utopian freethinking university summer camp (ripe with the possibilities of copious amounts of sex, drink and drugs) whereupon they become victim to man eating monsters. We're talking mid-1970s, hot pants and skimpy tops for the girls and college sweats, jeans and sneakers for the boys. We're also talking fun lovin' California, as re-imagined in the Lake District. Sounds implausible? Shovelin's artistry and filmic forensics make it truly convincing, softly anarchic and occasionally ironic.

What I really enjoyed were the various genre points of reference that helped give creative steer to the execution of each element under examination, not least the final scene where the two protagonists flee from an exploding house. The house in question is based on the iconic Bates Motel from Psycho, remodelled in a Lake District landscape and blown up by carefully controlled ballistics. Pan out from this scene to a 1970s Chevy heading down the desert highway with a menacing sense of foreboding and you have Hiker Meat as re-imagined by Shovelin and his team doing their craft 70 miles north of the Cornerhouse.

In the end, the plot is largely insignificant as we only ever see fragments of it and its promotional trailer. Nevertheless, what is so enjoyable is the way every detail of each component is scrutinised to the point of perfection. Which brings to mind two famous quotes by French director Jean-Luc Godard, who said “every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”. He also wisely said that it wasn't the devil but “god” that was in the detail.

Audacious in concept and, yes, occasionally ironic and self-knowing, Rough Cut the film and Hiker Meat the exhibition are fine examples of adventurous and experimental art commissioning which, thanks to the vision of the Cornerhouse, enables the likes of Jamie Shovelin to help us revisit the niche genre of exploitation B-movies.

Take it as seriously as you want or, like Shovelin and his fictitious Italian film director Jesus Rinzoli, laugh at the madness of it all.

Words: Tom Warman
Images: courtesy of Cornerhouse

The exhibition continues until 21 April.

¡VIVA! Festival 2013 @ Cornerhouse

This month The Cornerhouse plays host to the 19th ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival, transporting audiences away from the grim, grey streets of Manchester and into a world filled with the spice and colour of Spanish culture.



From the get-go, however, ¡Viva! demonstrates how Spanish and Latin American identity is made up of much more than just pure fun and frivolity. Yoshua Okón’s video installation, Octopus (2011), in Gallery 1 reminds us of the incredibly dark undercurrent that has plagued life in Guatemala since its civil war in the 1980s.

The performance itself is a re-enactment of this civil war, with the performers made up of those who were forced to fight. There is one major difference, however. The old battleground of Guatemala is instead replaced by a new one: the carpark of a Home Depot in LA. The war itself claimed over 200,000 victims, most of whom were Mayan Indians, in an attempt by Guatemala’s military leaders to eliminate the leftwing guerrilla uprising that threatened the existence of the country’s rightwing dictatorship.



Rather than use graphic imagery to draw attention to the sheer barbarity of the civil war, Okón uses satire to demonstrate how these atrocities were not only ignored by the Western world, but actively promoted. Okón’s positioning of the piece in a Home Depot, a physical embodiment of American capitalist society, points to the controversial relationship between Guatemala and America.

Reagan’s administration in America helped support the oppressive totalitarian regime in Guatemala by approving the sale of $6.36 million worth of military arms to its genocidal dictator, Efrain Rios Montt. Okón explores this through a layer irony, which is achieved using a complex system of camera angles and perspectives, projected into an almost 360 degree environment, completely immersing you in the action.



The accompanying piece in the gallery, US (2005), has a similar tone of to it. It is a single-channel four minute animation which consists of a solid gold monument of the letters ‘US’ towering above Washington, DC. The letters revolve on the spot and appear to act as some sort of shrine to either the American dream or corporate greed, the difference between the two being perhaps too close to separate.

The premiere screening of the festival’s launch night was ¡Atraco! (which translates as Hold-Up!), directed by Eduard Cortés. The film explores the real life events which led to an attempted jewellery shop robbery in Madrid during the 1950s. In an elaborate plot, akin to that of the Ocean’s Eleven series, two Argentine Peron loyalists attempt to steal back jewels which had been previously pawned to fund their leader’s time in exile. The reason for wanting the jewels was that they now risked falling into the hands of the Spanish dictator General Franco’s wife, having been previously owned by Argentina’s first lady Eva Peron. Still with me?



Despite its complexity, the film is undoubtedly an audience pleaser, with the two robbers in question truly stealing the show (cough, no pun intended). Guillermo Francella and Nicolás Cabré perform their roles as Merello, the exasperated veteran, and Miguel, hapless sidekick, down to a tee. In fact, the best moments of the film come when both characters argue and engage with each other in a quick-fire comedic way, re-enforcing their roles as experienced pro and naive first timer.

One of the funniest running gags throughout the film was how both of these Argentines managed to wrestle with the task of pretending to be Spanish in order to not arouse suspicion. In one scene, in which Miguel tries to rehearse the robbery, Merello tells him to be more Spanish and shout “bollocks” when he walks into the store. This, of course, goes about as well as you can expect, provoking a greater amount of laughter than it does terror.

Ultimately, it’s the fine balance between comedy and tragedy which makes ¡Atraco! such a captivating film to watch. Through his direction, Cortés has managed to create a film which is warm, charming and enjoyable, and yet also makes us question the true meaning of loyalty, family, friendship and brotherhood.

Words: Joseph Barratt.
Images: courtesy of The Cornerhouse.

The 19th ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival continues at The Cornerhouse until Sunday 24 March, 2013.

NOW THEN. ISSUE 3. A MAGAZINE FOR MANCHESTER.

Our first issue of 2013 will be distributed next week, but if you can't wait to get your mits on a copy then take a peek at the online version. As ever, you will find copies far and wide in the independent traders of the Manchester area. Below are a few tasters of the artwork in this issue, courtesy of Manchester's Dan Birkbeck.

We'd like to thank all our supporters for this issue (in page order):

MCR FOOD AND DRINK.
Battery Park Juice Bar.
The Eighth Day Shop & Cafe.
Épicerie Ludo.
Pokusevski's Deli & Cafe.
The Nook & Cranny.
The Font, NWS.

MCR INDEPENDENT ALE.
Outstanding Beers.
Marble Beers.
The Jackalope.
The Hillary Step.
The Whim Wham Cafe.

MCR ART AND LEISURE.
Ken Foster's Cycle Logic. (10% off see magazine advert for info.)
World Of Superheroes.
Loren Fetterman Custom Tattoo Artist.
Kagyu Ling Buddhist Centre.

WILMSLOW ROAD.
Fuel Cafe Bar.
The Font, Fallowfield.
Mockingbirds.

MCR MUSIC.
Wowie Zowie.
WR Audio.
The Deaf Institute.
Manchester Academy.

MCR EVENTS.
Insight Film Festival.
Jackdaw Social / TFFT Live.
Gorilla.

STOCKPORT.
Agapanthus Interiors.

Preview: Video Jam returns

The not-for-profit event curator Video Jam is set to assemble another eclectic mix of audio and visual artists for their next Antwerp Mansion showcase later this month.

After a short hiatus, Video Jam has set the date of Sunday 18 November for a fourth instalment.

The event, which has not been staged at its regular Antwerp Mansion home since July, will again create a speakeasy café environment for audience members to lounge in front of a makeshift screen fashioned from a large sheet while a variety of musicians and poets will provide a score. If that sounds ramshackle, then it is charmingly so.

The show will be left open to the interpretation of musicians Adam Hart, Boz Hayward and his Bozchestra, members of Songs For Walter, double bassist Dickon Kyme-Wright, Chris Barrett, opera soprano Lisa Newill-Smith, Fizzy Vickers as well as performances by writer James Leach and visual artist Sarah Hill. All of whom have been allocated a short film with which to work – most are produced by local filmmakers with one having recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

In the time since their last showcase at Antwerp Mansion, Video Jam has collaborated with Blank Media Collective at Sandbar as part of the Projector Series this summer and have more projects in the pipeline for next year.

Words: Ian Pennington

Video Jam 4 will take place on Sunday 18 November at Antwerp Mansion, Rusholme. 7pm doors, £2 entry on the door. For more information, see their website. This article first appeared on the Manchester Mule website.

Interview: thebrokendoor

Pantomime is reasonably considered to be the all-singing, all-dancing staple of the festive season. Its aesthetic and auditory enterprise appeals to both the coach-loads of school children high on Christmas spirit and the TV soap thespians who line their pockets with a Christmas bonus. But what if the icy chill of winter lessens your appetite for overly jovial slapstick and rhetorical audience interaction isn’t a prerequisite for an evening’s entertainment?

Experimental drum’n’bass specialists thebrokendoor think they have the answer. Using their knack for forward-thinking and unbounded creativity, they have adapted musically memorable films, reincarnating the originals’ tunes as technologically tweaked tangents using samplers and well-trained musical ears. The Lancashire quartet have hosted two previous annual audio-visual adventures in their native Bolton and the third will focus on the classic film Singing In The Rain.

They embark on a mini-tour, calling in the south Manchester area this Sunday (11th December) at Dulcimer bar in Chorlton, where they’ll be joined on the line-up by two of Manchester’s finest exports in electronica, Jason Singh and Veí, who’ll re-score the Quay Brothers’ Streets of Crocodiles and a walk-through of the computer game Limbo, respectively.

Now Then Manchester spoke to thebrokendoor’s vibraphonist and vocalist Emma Welsby ahead of the Manchester leg of the show.


Now Then: You performed an improvised set to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory last year. What made you decide to take this step?

thebrokendoor: We have been doing an alternate soundtrack to a film every year for the last three years. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory was a film which was a big part of our childhood memories and the original soundtrack lent itself well to being re-sampled so we could add our own twist on the songs. We were really pleased with the outcome of this and decided to try Singing In The Rain this year.

NT: How did it compare with your usual performances?

tbd: What we enjoy about our band is we can step out of the live improvised drum n bass we normally do and have side projects such as this to challenge us musically. In our normal set-up we pick a key and improvise around that, whereas working around the structure of a film makes us have more discipline. It changes how we work together as a team and we learn more about each other as a result. Instead of playing to people to make them dance this is much more a ‘sit down and watch’ affair, which is different for us.


NT: How did you select the film to use?

tbd: The film has strong songs which occur regularly throughout so it lent itself to us having quite a lot to perform. When we originally watched the film we had strong ideas for each song so it made sense to give this one a go!

NT: Are there any other musicians who’ve influenced this direction for the band?

tbd: This particular direction probably took influence from bands such as The Cinematic Orchestra who have written for film before. We also really vibe off musicians who push the boundaries of live technology such as Amon Tobin who have a great live show which is highly visual. One thing we wanted to do differently is to not just be a band playing in front of a film taking no inspiration from the original soundtrack. We stay true to the songs and take influence from them – hence why you can hear samples from the original songs as we play with them.


NT: Who inspires you in the world of film?

tbd: We all have different tastes in film in the band but we like the darkness of the soundtracks written by Danny Elfman and the abstract musical writings of Maurice Binder (James Bond). We also like Sofia Coppola for her selection of soundtracks for film. And writer Frank Darabond, producer Ridley Scott and director Ron Fricke because he creates tone without the need for a narrative. We like the French animator Moebius who creates fantastic other worlds.

NT: This year will be Singing In The Rain; what can we expect from that?

tbd: If you want to hear the original soundtrack re-sampled and reworked to incorporate big beats, bass, vibraphone and electronics, taking influence from drum n bass, dubstep, electronica and post rock then this might be the show for you!


Words: Ian Pennington
Poster #1: Craig Brown (Beards Club Illustration)
Poster #2: Courtesy of thebrokendoor
thebrokendoor photo: Courtesy of thebrokendoor
Jason Singh photo: Courtesy of Jason Singh

thebrokendoor headline an early evening of electronic music performed to specially selected films at Dulcimer in Chorlton on Sunday 11th December. Jason Singh (performing to Streets of Crocodiles by the Quay Brothers) and Veí (performing to a reworked walkthrough of the Limbo computer game) will also perform. Doors at 5pm; entry policy is pay-what-you-like, £3 suggested.

Efterklang @ Academy 3, Friday 25th February 2011

Each time Efterklang return to these shores it seems that they’ve embarked on a new elaborate artistic project. Previously it was the full orchestration of highly acclaimed album Parades; this time, the band use the slot usually offered to a support band by taking the chance to display their latest endeavour, their debut film, which is directed by Vincent Moon of La Blogotheque fame. Technical mishaps dictate that for the first half of the film the subtitles read backwards, eventually amended by a man fiddling about with the on-screen menu, but for the most part the film isn’t about the words, it’s about the sounds.

Rumbling into life with overwhelming sub bass and a series of natural sound recordings it’s a feast for the ears that shows great promise. However, it soon develops into what is seemingly an extended La Blogotheque showcase with a few self-referential nods to the band’s childhood and, in a similar way to Sigur Rós’s Heima, we find the band performing acoustic versions of tracks in a whole variety of locations, including a school backed by a high-five happy children’s choir.

The highlight however is the performance of ‘Alike’ in an old barn where apparently the band used to rehearse. Primarily focused on frontman Casper Clausen, as the song progresses the camera gradually pans out to reveal the band with a whole host of performers wielding an array of instruments, including not only trumpets and drums, but also bursting balloons and a broom being swept percussively. The song progresses and develops to a euphoric climax and it is this inventiveness and versatility that really portrays the essence of the band; creative thinkers who want to express their music in a considered and joyous way, and who better to help realise that on film than a man who spends his life capturing bands performing in creative spaces.

So now onto the main event and, as much as I enjoyed the film, it’s no match for the real thing. The band are welcomed onto the stage with a very warm welcome, performing to their largest Mancunian audience yet, but it takes until around the fifth song in, curiously the bleep and beat heavy ‘Step Aside’, for the crowd to really start getting excited. As the band introduce ‘Soft Beating’ you begin to realise you are experiencing something very special. This group of multi-instrumentalists perform their music with such ease and joy it’s a pleasure to experience; each musician’s part has its place without doing too much, but is somehow absolutely vital to the whole, as the songs hang together with a musical chemistry more reminiscent of classical composition than indie rock.

With Casper Clausen dictating proceedings, we are treated to a superb collection of tracks from their now extensive back catalogue and as they leave the stage the crowd beg for more. On their return, Clausen whispers through the beginning of ‘Cutting Ice to Snow’, the crowd are left with bated breath by what is perceived to be a dramatic pause, but actually turns out to be the band trying to hear Europe performing ‘The Final Countdown’ in the venue downstairs, which prompts a number of self versed renditions from the audience, a mischievous move which only goes to show their absolute joy at performing their creations to an adoring audience.

As the band bring their set to a close it’s with regret that I have to turn and leave; I could watch this band all day. Hopefully it won’t be long until we see them again, and who knows what sort of endeavours they’ll get up to between now and then?

Words & Images: Simon Bray

Danny Perez & Animal Collective present: ODDSAC

In Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange music is wrongly considered by Alex’s captors to be nothing more than “a useful emotional heightener.” During the experimental Ludovico Technique, the soundtrack to the disturbing images that they show Alex in conjunction with their cocktail of passion-numbing drugs is a mere afterthought. Testament to the power of audio-visual synchronicity, however, is the consequent sickness Alex feels towards the soundtrack’s 'Ludwig van', whom he previously worships. In short, the point is that film and music are inextricably linked.

The difference is that, seated in the Mint Lounge back in May, there’s never the suggestion that OH Productions have coerced the gathered audience into attending, nor are they using (or do they require) arcane tools to keep eyes fixated on the screen. And it’s not a given that pictures should fit snugly with the sound (or silence) of the same moment, but music can certainly conjure emotions and images in the mind’s eye. Add swirling, hypnotic visuals and you have an idea of elements of ODDSAC, a collaborative project between filmmaker Danny Perez and the New York-based buzz band Animal Collective, whose 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion has been gazed upon by an approving public eye; affording them considerably more attention than a previously cult following.


But the project might not have happened at all if it weren’t for the rapport between Perez and the band, who’re still as camera-shy as ever but were looking for a way to incorporate their music into film without falling into the trap of predictability and mild, watered-down enlightenment that can be the rockumentary. Animal Collective’s Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) elaborates: “as a band we’re not very comfortable having cameras around, but we’re comfortable hanging out with Danny and we’d done some videos with him, and we liked the stuff he’d done with Black Dice. So we just started throwing around ideas, such as, um, a vampire rowing on water...! Like what we talk about when we’re writing music – everything kind of comes from mutual ideas anyway, so it’s just nice to take that into a further realm.”

There’s the clear succinctness of shared listening and viewing habits, with Animal Collective providing the score to suit a film specialising in moments of surreal peril. Indeed it is the often improvised acting and abstract storyboard that sets the tempo, as Avey Tare explains, “we didn’t write any of the music until we’d watched the footage, so it was all kind of inspired by the live action stuff at first, then some of the more effective stuff came after that.”

Persuading actors to take on challenging, conceptual roles that range from ‘woman struggling to fend off a tarry wall’ to ‘family choking on expanding marshmallows’ and ‘cultish face-painted pelican people’ isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. But the loose, improvised vibe allows for individual interpretation, and there are even select cameo appearances from the US independent music scene, with Animal Collective’s own Noah ‘Panda Bear’ Lennox and Tickley Feather’s Annie Sachs testing their theatricality.

Danny Perez: “Annie Sachs, yeah this is a little bit of ODDSAC’s trivia – she’s a friend of ours in Philadelphia. There were four girls but you’ll notice that one of them I virtually cut out... It’s like, really – I couldn’t work with her; her performance is too bad! You just see her arms every now and then – there were four people and you hardly ever see the fourth person’s face... but two of them were actors and two of them were just friends from our neighbourhood and that woman [Annie Sachs], who I didn’t know too well at the time actually. I thought she had a good look, I thought she had a natural, dancing girl type of quality...”

Perez laughs off the alienation his techniques may bring and puts any differences down to experience: “it was difficult, it was really bottom of the barrel as far as the talent, I mean I’m happy with the performances, but the audition process was really ridiculous, like, ‘you want me to do what with the marshmallow?!’ So, I’d say... two thirds of the people I work with who’re put in ridiculous scenarios stay in touch and the other third never talk to me again!”


The film has had an effect through early viewings, one way or another. There are a couple of shock-inducing edits, exaggerated by added sharpness to the score and the presence of menacing characters, the influence for which is pinpointed by Danny Perez: “we had talks about the vampire. At one point they wanted me to go for the more traditional, widow’s peak type vampire and I wanted to go for a more Nosferatu, Herzog style vampire. His robes are like the religious robes that the clergy wear, but I think there’s a lot of influences – I was certainly influenced by a lot of old German expressionist films. There was definitely a nod to that...”

Portner adds that, “there was one fan who said they had nightmares for a week after!”

“There was one girl in Chicago who told me she was diagnosed as a lucid dreamer when she was younger,” Perez reveals. “She said it brought back a lot of the things that had, like, entered her brain... I mean, yeah, the way it moves, the way it’s formatted – it sort of follows a dream logic and that was certainly intentional.”

There’s a painstaking precision to much of the score, and Portner cites influences such as John Carpenter and Frank Zappa’s Burnt Weeny Sandwich film when composing, but the soundtrack remains undeniably Animal Collective in its strata of feedback, distorted harmonies and psychedelic operatics.

“Well, for the more abstract stuff, we pretty much had to watch the footage as we cut it,” Portner recalls. “Like the long ambient one before the kaleidoscope thing – we actually took a long time with Danny in the studio to just watch it and make some changes; take that there, pull that there because the sounds really get messed up, you know? It was a lot about letting the structure and the scenes shape the way the songs are formed – even the more song-y ones, like the first song was kind of structured that way around the visuals because the way I wrote the original melody it was way too long, you know, we didn’t want it to go on for that long so we ended up cutting all these different parts together in the studio rather than a song that we would normally play together live... None of it was played live – it was all completed in the studio.”


It is a project that’s been four years in the pipeline, but will still be one met with a raised eyebrow by a post-Merriweather fanbase. There are moments of the more palatable chorals synonymous with that latest LP, but it would be more surprising for Animal Collective to ride on the wave of their newfound mainstream recognition, than to continue with their own unique vision as seems to be the case. Reminders of the older, sketchier feedback distortions are frequent, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable. Whatever the response to ODDSAC, they’re certainly not following the Ludovico Technique’s lead by coercing an audience into the auditorium. There may be more than a fair share of disturbing scenes and tension-building music to match, but nobody’s stopping you from hiding behind your sofa, and the side-effects that A Clockwork Orange’s Alex (and the lucid-dreaming girl from Chicago) faced are hardly representative of an engaging end product.

Portner is certainly comfortable with their sound, even if others haven’t been over the years: “well I think we’re pretty used to it by now, we’ve been dealing with it for 10 years or so! It’s, um, difficult in terms of our own tastes and different people’s taste, but I enjoy a lot of feedback and all the sounds you can get from that really leap out and get into your ears. With one of our records in particular, we took it to a label and they were like ‘this record’s broken, man! There’s this loud piercing sound on the first track with these dogs running around the room...’ and we were like, ‘really, it’s kinda supposed to sound like that!’”

Avey Tare does see it as a one-off for the band, though, and lowers expectations of future additions to their live repertoire: “we like playing live because of the freedom and I think we’d have to listen too intently to each track; we’d have too many cues because someone would be synced up and it just wouldn’t be very fun for us! It is what it is – we created it to be this thing and not to play along live to it, so I don’t think there’s any point really for us. But that’s not to say we wouldn’t play the songs live...”

ODDSAC is released on DVD in the UK on 16th August.

Words: Ian Pennington
Pictures: Courtesy of In House Press