UNKLE End Titles: Stories For Film Review
A Collection of Music Inspired by Movies, X-Files & Odyssey in Rome
Jul 31, 2008
“This is not a new album,” James Lavelle, who together with Pablo Clements makes up UNKLE, writes in the liner notes to End Titles…Stories For Film. Instead this album is a collection of old and new material recorded and compiled in the two years following the release of the group’s last album, War Stories.
Unlike War Stories, which had a clear theme threading the music, End Titles leaves room for anything from spooky soundscapes to electronic rock. Many of the tracks feature in films, including 10 of 22 tracks culled from the soundtrack to Odyssey in Rome, and “Broken” taken from X-Files I Want to Believe, one of only two songs on that soundtrack not scored by Mark Snow.
However, many of the tracks on the album have yet to find homes on the silver screen and instead soundtrack “another, imaginary film – this time one of our own making”.
Stories For Film
UNKLE collaborated with a pool of incredible talent for this record including vocalist Gavin Clark on tracks such as “Cut Me Loose”, an evocative cut that conjures memories of Peter Gabriel’s masterpiece, Passion, before exploding into a Chemical Brothers-sounding hard hitter. One of the stand out tracks on this album, it morphs over several tempos forbidding the listener to get too comfortable.
Reminiscent of Portishead, “Ghosts”, a mid-tempo track builds from whispering vocals and heavy tribal drumming while it tingles the spine with menacing and thought-provoking lyrics, “You can hide but the Ghosts will get you from the inside”.
“Blade in the Back”, also featuring Clark, thumps like Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” with guitar styling of early New Order recordings. While not the best track on the album, it’s worth a spin or two.
Even Balance
End Titles fills every listenable minute with moody, dark and sensual music. The album’s full length instrumentals leave room to dream and ponder for several minutes, inter-woven with shorter snippets of sound that evolve slowly before suddenly truncated.
With a disturbing bass, “Kaned and Abel”, from Odyssey in Rome, reveals a wide range of foreboding and urgency in just over 1 minute, while piano-driven mood piece, “Synthetic Water”, could accompany images of a character’s rebirth or desolate isolation. “Even Balance” sounds like Sarah MacLauchlan emerging onstage only to fade to black when interrupted by talk of self-destruction.
In a Broken Dream
End Titles explores various musical forms such as an acoustic guitar folk spin on “Open Up Your Eyes” featuring Abel Ferrara, the pondering “Heaven” featuring Clark – one of the albums most interesting and moving tracks, and the harder beats of “Can’t Hurt” featuring Clark and Joel Cadbury on vocals.
Trippy mood pieces include the lingering “In a Broken Dream” filled with moody piano and clanging chins, the mysterious “Romeo Void”, the buzzing “Clouds” featuring Black Mountain, and “Against the Grain” featuring Gavin Clark, which mixes looping strings with ethereal electronics, tropical shakers and chirps for a though-provoking experience.
Sadly, End Titles…Stories For Film doesn’t include UNKLE’s brilliant techno remix of the theme from X-Files I want to Believe. Highlighting the strings and the spooky piano familiar to fans of the show, UNKLE beefs up the track into a moody floor filler found only on the official soundtrack album.
“So not a new album,” Lavalle writes “But new music that has been inspired by the moving image”. Since this album is a non-album, End Titles makes an excellent introduction to a brilliant group at one of their most experimental phases.
End Titles…Stories For Film is available digitally and at retail on September 2.
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