Rashomon

Bio:

Over a year in the making, Ashcan Copy (Film Music Vol.3) contains interpretations of music from unreleased films from Italy, Japan and the USA (among others), dating from the 1950s to 1970s and sourced from film archives across Europe. These eight tracks expand on the source material to include elements of noise, folk, psychedelia, prog and jazz noir, while still remaining faithful to their origins. Unavailable in any other format and largely unknown until now, this music can at last be heard.

For fans of Ennio Morricone, Goblin, Popol Vuh and Bohren und der Club of Gore.
Vinyl-only edition of 150 copies!

Tracks :
DOUBLE KILL (1968, dir. Giovanni Grimaldi)
JIGORA (1969, dir. Yasuki Chiba)
RENDEZVOUS WITH HELL (1970, dir. Marc Roldán)
THE NIGHTWATCHMAN (1975, dir. Josef Brezková)
THE DOOR HAS TWO SIDES (1973, dir. Leopoldo Savona)
HOB HURST'S HOUSE (1978, dir. Tony Drake)
BLUE MIRROR (1973, dir. Bob Evans)
PACEMAKER (1959, dir. Frank Andresano)

THE FINISHING LINE (Film Music Volume 2) (Hinterzimmer, 2009)

The second full-length album from Rashomon follows 2007's The Ruined Map (Film Music Volume 1). Inspired by John Krish's scaremongering public information broadcast The Finishing Line (1977), the record is a sonic re-imagining of the film as a haunted meditation on the power of memory, drawing the listener into a claustrophobic sense of unease and mounting horror. An amalgam of library music, 1970s prog soundtracks, musique concrète and spectral jazz, the music of Rashomon is by turns creepy, terrifying and artless.

Tracks :
THE FIRST RACE (9 And Under Fence Breaking)
THE SECOND RACE (12 And Under Stone Throwing)
THE THIRD RACE (Last Across)
THE FOURTH RACE (All Ages Tunnel Walk)

Reviews:

“Rashomon is the solo project of Matt Thompson, and this record is the second release in the artist's Film Music series. This one functions as a proposed soundtrack to the notorious 1977 public information film, The Finishing Line, a gruesome twenty-minute piece that attempted to discourage children from playing on railway lines - a prime target for a touch of darkly humorous soundtracking…he certainly gets into the spirit of things, conjuring creepy library soundtracks and '70s styled prog-drone with his psaltery, zither and Mellotron. A splendid tribute to the haunting, memory-distorting power of nostalgia.” (Boomkat)

“The highly talented Matt Thompson plays and records everything, using very specific instrumentation and electro-acoustical methods to achieve musical effects and constructs which are deliberately intended as homages to cinema soundtrack composition…with these stately, slow and graceful pieces he seems to have got the balance just perfect. A very accessible album, and one which will prove especially seductive to listeners who enjoy Jonny Trunk’s OST show on Resonance radio. What’s impressive is how Thompson stays on the right side of pastiche and kitsch, and works in passages of avant-garde dissonance to express the unsettling darker sides of his richly ambiguous themes.” (Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector)

“A swift montage of sound. Going from slow jazzy drums and slide guitars (spaghetti western!), fading into a piercing electronic soundscape, a bit of drones and then a montage of samples to add that filmic sequence…it moves all over the musical spectrum and makes a nice coherent piece of music.” (Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly)

“Not a soundtrack so much as an impressionistic reinterpretation, it encompasses ultra-slow Lynchian doom jazz (a la Bohren & Der Club Of Gore), duelling guitar skronk, synapse-drenching high-pitched buzz, atonal hellscapes and harps falling down cellar stairs…in its most direct narrative moment, vintage Tomorrow’s World oscillators ooze out a locomotive rumble that modulates into a wailing siren. This is profoundly disturbing music, but to nowhere near the same degree as the film itself. Go find it. Watch it. And for god’s sake, don’t play on the railway tracks.” (Matt Evans, Rock-A-Rolla)

Available in the UK from Boomkat
Available in Europe from Hinterzimmer Records
Available in North America from Crucial Blast

THE RUINED MAP (Film Music Volume 1) (Mirrors, 2007)

“The Ruined Map : Film Music Volume 1” is a bewildering mix of prog rock, electronic noise, waltzes, East European folk, trad metal, drones, psych rock and free jazz, similar in intention to soundtrack visionaries such as Toru Takemitsu and Ennio Morricone. Each of the eight tracks is based on a different film – not specifically in the form of soundtracks, but rather as companion pieces to the psychic states invoked by the more bizarre outer reaches of narrative cinema. The ideas and filmic techniques of directors such as Seijun Suzuki, Albert Zugsmith and Hiroshi Teshigahara are applied to musical processes in the form of pans, zooms, narrative discontinuities etc.

Tracks :
ONIBABA (Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
BLAST OF SILENCE (Allen Baron, 1962)
A QUIET WEEK IN THE HOUSE (Jan Svankmajer, 1969)
THE MASCOT (Wladislaw Starewicz, 1934)
BRANDED TO KILL (Seijun Suzuki, 1967)
LANCELOT DU LAC (Robert Bresson, 1974)
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER (Albert Zugsmith, 1962)
RUINED MAP (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1968)

Reviews:

"Not so much a collection of music influenced by films, but rather an attempt to write music that would fit the mood of each film. Such a brash attempt to insinuate new meaning into finished work is risky, but here it works, as the emotional benchmarks set by each film helps the new tunes aim high, often reaching their goal of illustrating how one work of art can influence another, and how the receiver of art can inject personal meaning into existing work and make it personal…Thompson’s musical palette includes drone, psych rock, Eastern European folk and a little hard rock. Zithers and gongs and mellotron are mixed in with traditional rock instrumentation; everything is a proper tool when you are trying to communicate what art does to your heart." 8/10 (digitalisindustries.com)

"The new solo project from Matt Thompson seeks to go beyond synchronicity and inhabit the same spaces / shadows / crevices as the works of experimental filmmakers…haunted merry-go-round surrealism, Balkan wedding music, heaving prog rhythm sections, falsetto hair metal and freak-outs channelling Sonny Sharrock’s ecstatic guitar style. There are times when directions taken are jarring and bizarre, but there are passages where the idea of reifying cinema’s moods and spaces into sound are thoroughly explored." (Rock-A-Rolla magazine [issue 10])

"Very much worth hunting down...this is really very good stuff, Onibaba and Blast of Silence reminiscent of 5UUs, The Art Bears, in places Thinking Plague, referencing Van Der Graaf Generator...influences aside, the whole premise works extremely well - A Quiet Week In The House captures the surrealist short film of the same name perfectly, right down to its neurotic repetition, broken-down Balkan style and Svankmajer's twitchy editing...something visual, narrative and emotionally distinct is suggested by each composition. Better than alternative soundtracks, they're trailers, sending you straight to the nearest arthouse cinema." (organart.com)

"Even after a few listens, I can tell it’s going to take many more for this album to fully sink in, there’s so much to absorb here. Billed as ‘film music’, this is a very diverse and extremely experimental disc…there is a whole world of music to be discovered here…the title track is the most sombre as well as the most moving piece on the album - very quiet with a throbbing drone and some strange haunting instruments and percussion. A very fine ending to an amazing disc...it’s very refreshing to hear such great new music in such an innovative production. Very highly recommended." (progressiveears.com)

"Over the course of the the record, as the tracks slip from film to film, director to director, Bresson to Suzuki, Starewicz to Shindo, Branded To Kill, Lancelot Du Lac, Onibaba, The Mascot, the songs follow suit, shifting from mood to mood, sound to sound, soaring strings, ballroom jazz, bursts of acid fried synth blow outs, tribal almost African sounding drumming, gypsy folk violins, super intense spastic freaked out avant metal damage, deep shimmering drones, long stretches of creaking industrial ambience, haunting bagpipe like melodies, moody abstract drifts, gently strummed guitars, clouds of cymbal shimmer, a constantly shifting world of sound, deep and layered, expansive and indeed, so cinematic...anyone into far out soundtracks, experimental soundscapes or avant prog should definitely check this out." (Aquarius Records)

"The Ruined Map is for the most part dark in tone, and explores cinematic atmospheres in a range of different, discomfiting ways..."Onibaba" (showing no small debt to Goblin's demonic prog) brims with ominous creaks and indistinguishable satanic whispers over a steady mono-tonal bassline and a nervous, breathy organ...Sure, making a progressive/ambient album dedicated to obscure art-house nuggets is one of the loftier concepts out there in the musical spectrum, but hey, we’re talking about the work of a musician whose work is mentioned in the same breath as Magma. The Ruined Map is an expressive shot at bringing filmic feeling to dimensions of sound, and doesn’t dwell too needlessly in the realm of the inscrutable." (dustedmagazine.com)

Available in North America from CD Baby, Wayside or Aquarius Records
Available in Europe from Conspiracy Records .. ..

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