Description:	CD on Static Caravan
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Experimental / Abstract
	Label:	Static Caravan
	Price:	£10.99
	Availability:	Dispatched within 2-5 days (on average).

4
...according to our Brett on 20 November 2008.

Last year Bronnt Industries Kapital did a soundtrack for the European DVD release of Haxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages), released by the sadly defunct Tartan Films, I've only seen the Criterion release so the music's totally new to me which is probably for the best - it'd be a bit wrong to review the CD with the way it soundtracked the visuals in mind. Luckily the sounds stand completely on their own without the need for a visual accompaniment. Mournful and haunting like a ruined old church, these tracks utilise a multitude of acoustic and electronic sources to rustle up an atmosphere of olde worlde dread that it's easy to get completely swallowed up by.. Organs feature heavily as you might expect. We were just discussing what genre we could handily box stuff like this into and it's really hard, there's quite a lot of tinkling experimental electro-acoustic baz around at the moment and you always feel like your flailing around like an idiot trying to describe it properly. Ant's suggestion of calling it 'donkey porn' is as good as any I've heard though. This is really, really good stuff. If you do feel the need to check the film out (and you should!) the DVD containing this soundtrack is out of print so will most likely be rising in price as we speak, so the best way to go to enjoy the film with this score might be to get the Criterion DVD and play this at the same time.. Bit of a ballache and it might well be synched up differently but the running times are pretty much the same so it just might work...

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What their label says...

The world of horror soundtracks has long been an inspiration for Bronnt Industries Kapital, the musical project revolving around Bristol-based composer Guy Bartell, and it is no surprise that Bronnt should return the favour by delivering a horror soundtrack of its own. Häxan (1922, dir. Benjamin Christensen) is a fusion film using dramatisation, documentary and animation to explore the themes of witchcraft and superstition. Met with outrage on its release, it has since been reappraised as a classic. Bronnt was commissioned to write a new soundtrack to accompany the film's first release on DVD in Europe (TVD3758) in 2007, and it is this soundtrack which forms the group's second album, the follow up to 2005's acclaimed Virtute et Industria.  Much of Häxan was shot at night to enhance the sinister mood of the film, and Bronnt utilized a similar schedule to evoke the awe of the Sabbat. The soundtrack was composed and performed using a wide range of instrumentation, including clockwork devices, transistor organs, mellotron, clarinet, guitars, bespoke string instruments, pianos, tone generators, analog synthesizers and elaborate processing and manipulation through antique tape machines and plate reverbs. The resulting scope of the soundtrack is vast, ranging from minimalist clockwork lullabies to lush orchestral ensemble pieces, heavenly analog sound collages to hellish electrical miasmas, all imbued with a darkly hypnagogic ambiance worthy of Christensen's strange world populated by mechanical demons and castles in the clouds.