Cyber-Steam Punk Magic Scanner Lantern
If you’re not tired of film festivals and you happen to be on the Isle of Jersey between September 23 to 26 you may want to check out the Branchage Film Festival. A lively event that uses the island’s single Cineworld cineplex and 17 other venues (churches, nightclubs, the Opera House, the Polytunnel (a greenhouse), a “horse-box” trailer and a Sushi bar) as screening/performance venues for a variety of feature films, shorts, documentaries and live music soundtracks. That last item appears to be one of the specialties of the festival. Of note; the Psychedelic/Experimental/Classical Japanese duo, Zombie Zombie will be performing a soundtrack for a screening of Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” and there will be a Victorian Magic Lantern show with a live soundtrack by Robin Rimbaud/Scanner.
For those of us who can actually remember the Nineties rave/techno scene (MDMA -or “e” to it’s fans-does have a habit of inducing anterograde amnesia-so we’ll take this in tiny steps, okay Dude?) Scanner was one of the more intriguing acts. As a working name for U.K. artist Robin Rimbaud it allowed him to produce a pop music-art hybrid where sophisticated electronic music used sampled and live vocals pulled from mobile phone transmissions private, civilian and official (yes, the police band). Although these works are still a presence in the dance clubs with the edgier DJ’s, Rimbaud has moved off into other areas of live performance, gallery installations, opera, radio, critical writing and website based work (he collaborated on one of the first webzines: I/O/D – their motto; Software is Mind Control- get some. Sorry most of their archived issues only run on Mac’s and we’re talking pre-OS X).
For Branchage, he will be providing the soundtrack for a Victorian Magic Lantern show created from the archives and collection of Jersey resident, the late Damer Waddington. For the most of the festival audience it will be the first time these images have ever been seen and that’s how it’s going to be for the soundtrack’s composer. Apparently he likes the risk factor involved. It’s all in an interview with Luke Turner in The Quietus: a modern music internet magazine well worth checking out.
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