I have placed the above little film on here for three reasons:
(i) I am quite pleased with it but feel it has been depressingly overlooked, (ii) I wanted to introduce our music projects to this Substack thing, and (iii) I needed a clever segue into a brief discussion about one of my favourite films. Let’s get on with it.
Cathy and I have been making noise together for almost four decades. We currently record under the name TonesForTelepaths and have a half-decent back catalogue of aural abominations on Bandcamp that is free to peruse and plunder. We are studio-bound; we offer no live performances. We use a variety of mostly vintage electronic noisemakers to construct what we pretentiously call ‘aural sculptures’ (thanks, The Stranglers). We rarely do what the kids call ‘beats’ so you won’t find our particular brand of electronic music on any DJ set lists. You can dance to our music if you want to, but it is not recommended and we will not be held liable for any injury sustained. The only movement we would endorse is, perhaps, a slight swaying to-and-fro, or maybe even a gentle roll side-to-side if you feel the need to exercise your four-way hips. We like to say we make EHM (Electronic Head Music), a phrase that we believe we may have coined but would likely get sued over if we made that claim formally. We run everything we do through our punk and post-punk sensibilities but, these days, instead of jumping about on stage like a couple of ninnies, we prefer to sit behind a fancy studio desk in a pair of vintage Eames shell chairs pressing buttons and twiddling knobs. The people who like our stuff tend to love it; those who do not usually detest it. It’s a very binary thing. This is partly by design as we find ambivalence frustrating and wholly unacceptable.
We do not make many films, we find the process tedious and not immediately gratifying enough. This little ‘music video’, however, we actually did enjoy making. The accompanying soundtrack comes from an EP we released in 2019 called Subjects. The EP is a concept work ostensibly inspired by an obsession with the wonderful cinematic epic, The Colour of Pomegranates, by the great Soviet-Georgian-Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. While the music attempts to pay homage to the themes of Parajanov’s masterpiece, the imagery used in our film departs somewhat by pulling in archaic science and early Soviet space programme footage in a rather clumsy, perhaps lazy, attempt at a poetical juxtaposition of old world and new. Looking through our retrospectacles one can see that it doesn’t entirely work as designed but it felt like it did at the time. We hope that you love it but, if not, we hope you will have the decency to fully hate it. Nothing in the middle, please!
As for the truly remarkable spectacle that is The Colour of Pomegranates, the film is a startling surreal account of the life of Armenian poet/musician Sayat-Nova. Presented as a series of highly stylized vignettes, the film uses poetry, music, extravagant costumes and elaborate mise-en-scène in lieu of any dialogue in the traditional sense. Each scene is an astonishing work of art, some almost overwhelmingly beautiful and bizarre. Where traditional surrealist cinema, such as Bunuel’s, often hides behind a curtain of comedy, Parajanov’s is unabashed in-your-face serious, dripping with mysticism, importance, and fantastical beauty. On reflection, I do suppose he is similar to Tarkovsky in this regard. The film isn’t an easy watch if conventional narrative form is a must-have. But if expectations and biases can be set aside, the film can deliver to the viewer an almost transcendental experience. Viewing this film is more akin to walking around the Louvre or the Prado with every shot or sequence an astonishing canvas of impossible scene construction. For me, The Colour of Pomegranates stands alone, peerless in the expansive canon of avant-garde cinema - there is simply nothing else like it. All this is to say, the film is truly essential viewing so please surrender to it and allow yourself to be astonished.
Nota bene: The Colour of Pomegranates is available from the Criterion Collection in both standard DVD and Blu-ray formats. A link to the film at Criterion is embedded in the below image.
As for the TonesForTelepaths back catalogue, that is available by clicking the mugshot below. Thanks in advance for having a listen!
Share this post