I wrote the score for a new documentary that’s premiering at The Tribeca Film Festival tonight. The film, called Pray The Devil Back to Hell, is about the Liberian Women’s peace movement. It’s directed by Gini Reticker and produced by Abby Disney.

This is the second documentary in the last year on an African subject that I have scored (the other was Shadow Work by Nigel Walker). One particular challenge is to create music which has an appropriate African sensibility but is not just ersatz African music, or African kitsch. I always encourage filmmakers to use actual African music if that’s what’s called for — and both of these films do have wonderful uses of authentic music from the places they are set.

Anyway, Pray The Devil Back to Hell needed a real film score to support the intense and moving story of a group of Liberian women who rise up and take on Charles Taylor, ultimately becoming a key factor in bringing a fragile peace to their country. We ended up with a dramatic and quite dark score that uses some African elements but is primarily bass, trumpet, strings and percussion, with some wonderful contributions from the great Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo. It was a great honor to work with Ms. Kidjo, and her extraordinary voice brings a transcendent, human, female element to the music which I could never have created without her.

The track I’m posting here is the song from the end credit sequence. I wrote the music first and gave an instrumental sketch to Angelique, and she wrote the lyrics (in Yoruba) and sang the vocal parts. I also was blessed with a beautiful solo from master Kora player Yacouba Sissouk (who happens to be the cousin of Toumani Diabate). I mixed the track, along with the rest of the score, in my studio.

All of the screenings of Pray The Devil Back to Hell at Tribeca are sold out, but you can get more info about screenings at the official site for the film. You can also see the trailer at that site, which features some other excerpts from the score. And the film has a Myspace here.

This just arrived in my inbox this morning, so I thought I’d share. I’m thinking that the tsunami of hope is not quite high enough yet that we will be hearing an official presidential campaign song from a Bmore rapper. But how about using it in some targeted ads? Just the fact that you might stop and consider the idea says something about the current climate, doncha think?

When Barack Obama is president, all radio stations, even NPR, will be required to play a certain minimum number of hours per week of hip-hop.

Mullyman has a Myspace here. Mully’s song The Life, The Hood, The Streetz is on both versions of The Wire soundtrack, which you can find here and here. The image of Barack Obama above comes from a limited edition print by Shepard Fairey, which is here. Barack Obama himself is here.

I’m Blake Leyh and I endorse Barack Obama for president.

Today finds us with a triple-pronged post about The Beatles. Yes, those The Beatles. One of the very first records I owned and loved, in 1971 at the age of eight, was a scratched vinyl LP of A Hard Days Night, which for some reason came to me inside the cardboard sleeve of With The Beatles. I played that thing to death, and later moved on to most of the band’s other catalogue. But after the age of 14 when I discovered The Clash, and John Cage shortly thereafter, I never voluntarily listened to The Beatles again. As an adult I have mostly felt about The Beatles the same way I feel about Beethoven; geniuses who revolutionized music, but all due respect, I’d most often rather listen to Bach.

Eighteen months ago I started working as the sound designer on Julie Taymor’s new film Across The Universe, and I was surprised to realize that not only do I know the lyrics to almost every Beatles song by heart, but the music is stunning. This may seem like a vapid or disingenuous statement, but I mean it sincerely. At this point in history, The Beatles music has become an archetypal cultural touchstone to Western Civilization that functions in the same way folk music has operated for earlier cultures.

Across The Universe is a musical featuring 35 re-imagined Beatles songs. It tells the story of a young man from Liverpool named Jude who comes to America looking for his father and becomes embroiled in the counter-culture of the 1960’s in New York. The film features new versions of the songs, sung live by the actors, with a few celebrity cameos from the likes of Bono (I Am The Walrus) and Joe Cocker (Come Together). The film is 95% finished, and I think it’s great - one of the most enjoyable working experiences of my career, and the most elaborate sound design I have created since The Abyss in 1989. The film is scheduled for a release in September 2007, and you can see the (corny but effective) trailer here.

Since I’ve been spending so much ear-time on The Beatles, I keep stumbling across Beatles-related items and cover-versions, and today’s mp3 post is one of my favorites. Laibach are a group of Slovenian conceptual-industrialist crypto-nationalist parodist nutjobs who archly responded to charges of fascism by saying “We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter.” Their 1988 re-working of Let It Be is a radical demonstration of the durability of The Beatles music; the songs maintain their integrity and essential function even when torn to pieces musically, politically, sonically, and artistically. If you like this track as much as me, be warned that it is not typical of the Uber-metal thrashing screaming stuff which beautifully comprises most of the rest of the album. You can buy this version of Let It Be here. Laibach have an official site here, and their Wikipedia entry here is efficiently enlightening. Thanks to my colleague Igor Nikolic for suggesting this record to me.

The final prong for today is the extraordinary book Recording The Beatles by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew. If you are interested in the historical development of the recording studio, or you love gear, or you are a technically-inclined fan of popular music, this is a bible. Exhaustively, obsessively, insanely, the authors have documented the minutiae of everything related to how The Beatles records were created. We get floor plans and architect’s blueprints for the studios at Abbey Road, detailed photos of knobs, nostalgic recollections from the tiniest of minor technicians, diagrams of who sat where, lists of percussion instruments used on specific tracks, on and on and on. And the whole thing comes in a beautiful collectors-edition package big enough to prop open the heaviest asylum door. Could these guys PLEASE make another book like this about Lee Perry??? Mind-boggling and highly recommended. You can see excerpts and buy it here.

Italian progressive rockers Goblin created many film scores during the late 70s and early 80s for Italian schlockmeister Dario Argento, but their magnum opus is the score for George Romero’s epic B-Movie masterpiece Dawn of The Dead, and this is the best track from that score.

Film music often uses a fast tempo when accompanying a chase or when trying to be scary, but “L’alba Dei Mori Viventi” has the ghastly slow dragging tempo of a nightmare, perfectly mirroring the relentless onslaught of the zombies themselves, and crowned with a drunken, spinning-out-of-control ascending synth melody that sounds like it’s being performed by a zombie simultaneously waving a severed limb.

Due to wack international licensing agreements, the complete original score has never been released in the US on a domestic label, but a version is available here. You can find the DVD of Dawn of The Dead here. Goblin has a site here, and there’s a comprehensive fan site here.

Always at least a day late, but almost never even close to a dollar short, The Earl of Edgecombe has finally dropped his Summer Mix 2006, just in time for your Labor Day pig roast. It includes the following artists, tripping gracefully around, over, and under each other simultaneously:

Augustus Pablo / Dem Franchize Boyz / Thelonius Monk / Jay-Z / Max Romeo & The Upsetters / Lee Perry / Indeep / Young Leek / Eric B & Rakim / Marrs / Talking Heads / Manu Dibango / Leslie Winer / Future Sound of London / John Cage

Previous posts with The Earl, all of which still contain active links:

Jamie Foxx V. Eno & Byrne: My Unpredictable Life
Summer Mix 2006: Clash Up and Burn
Gwen Stefani vs. Miles Davis: Summatime Girl

The Earl is somewhat vaporous and cannot be linked to anywhere, but you can get the new mix by clicking on the “Hear This Now” button below.

The late 20th century is littered with examples of brave souls who came together for a while, made some great music, and then returned to the margins like rusting hulks on the side of the M4 — or perhaps they ended up working at Tesco’s, dreaming of the days when they made glorious noise and we all listened. Pigbag might fall into this category, although strictly speaking some of their members did go on to carve a slightly larger niche in musical history. Anybody out there know where bassist Simon Underwood ended up?

From 1980 to 1983 Pigbag did their thing, and this track was their highest moment of visibility, actually reaching the top 5 of the UK charts when it was released for a second time in 1983. But never mind all that, just turn up your little computer speakers out there until your sub-woofer rattles the copy holder, and give this a listen.

I got this from the 7″ vinyl in Mark Harrington’s pile. Unfortunately there is very little Pigabg to link to, notwithstanding the valiant work at fansite pigbag.com.

Wendy Carlos is probably best known for her Moog interpretations of classical music; her Switched on Bach remains one of the unlikeliest hit records of the 1960’s, and her versions of Beethoven are what most people remember as the primary musical voice of Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. But her best work from that period is this original composition Timesteps, which she was inspired to write after reading Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, before the film existed. Timesteps was edited and excerpted in several places in the released version of the film, but the complete piece was not in the film or on the original version of the soundtrack.

After being unavailable for many years, A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos’s Complete Original Score was released in 1998. The CD also includes all of the Beethoven stuff and several other previously unreleased pieces. But Timesteps itself is the highlight, an incredible work with or without the film, and is also a considerable technical achievement when one considers that it was recorded using the old Moog 3C which was monophonic and could only play one voice at a time. It also makes great use of vintage vocoding technology to create some very striking vocal textures.

You can buy A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos’s Complete Original Score here. There is a treasure-trove of fascinating information about the music at Wendy Carlos’ web site.

This is one of my favorite Waits songs and was already almost unbearably poignant and nostalgic last week; today, I defy you to listen and not get a lump in your throat. It comes from Small Change, Waits’ 1976 outing which you can find here.

While I don’t exactly wish I was in New Orleans tonight, I do have a bit of that feeling that I should be there. People with emotional ties to New York who weren’t here on September 11th 2001 said the same thing. New Orleans is one of the very few American cities I have ever wanted to live in. Some of the best and worst times of my life happened there. She owns a piece of me.

For an interesting insider perspective on current events in New Orleans, including eyewitness reports of police looting (only in N’awlins!), check out The Interdictor.

Just a quick post from the road, availing myself of JetBlue’s free wifi…

I don’t know of too many reggae tunes sung in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, calling for peace, but it seems like we could probably use a few more. In the meantime there’s this one from Cote d’Ivoirian wizard Alpha Blondy. Although i’ve never seen him play live, he apparently puts on a great show when he’s not too stoned to climb on to the stage.

Alpha Blondy has a new (old) album out in the US right now, Elohim, which you can find here. Jerusalem is on The Best of Alpha Blondy, which is available here.

When The Hounds of Hell are on your tail or The Dogs of Summer are nipping at your heels, throw them this bone for best results.

In 1982 George Clinton emerged from the wreckage of the crashed Funkadelic mothership with his first solo album, Computer Games, which included this song. Atomic Dog sounded quite different than most American pop music at that time, with its backwards drums, nonsense chants, grunts, chipmunk vocals, and mechanical synth hooks, but the single nevertheless took the number one spot on the R&B charts for four weeks.

This is the deliciously satiating extended Atomic Mix version, not the shorter version released as a single and appearing on Computer Games (which is out of print). You can find this long version on the Rhino compilation Phat Trax 3 here, or you can get the good compilation The Best of George Clinton for a measly $6.98 here, which includes the original short version.