Nick Cave & Warren Ellis

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5...according to our Brett on Fri 18 Sep, 2009.

Warren Ellis from Dirty Three and Nick Cave from Nick Cave have spent a bit of time together in recent years doing fantastic film scores and here we've got a double CD collection of them, presented in a handsome gatefold-style pack along with some selected odds and ends. I've seen a few of the films involved (which include John Hillcoat's The Proposition and the forthcoming adaptation of The Road, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, The Girls of Phnom Penh and others) and while their sounds complement and support the visuals beautifully there's a surprising flow and consistency to this material which works very well indeed as a pair of distinct albums. The first contains the bigger pieces, ranging from melancholic themes which evoke the hardships and pathos of life in years gone by and the dignity (or lack thereof) of those who have no choice but to struggle through it any way they can. That's always been a favourite theme of Nick Cave's but the quiet intensity of these instrumentals, in which Ellis's trademark plaintive violin is always a standout, really works to complement his usual methods of tackling it: those darkly allegorical lyrics. Disc two has more brief, incidental pieces but the quality doesn't even hint at dropping for a second. Spend a couple of hours in the company of White Lunar and you'll come out the other side smothered from head to toe in gooey satisfaction.

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CD Album (2)
Disc 1

1.     Song For Jesse
2.     Moving On
3.     What Must Be Done
4.     Song For Bob
5.     Happy Land
6.     The Proposition #1
7.     Road To Banyon
8.     The Rider #2
9.     Martha's Dream
10.     Gun Thing
11.     The Rider Song
12.     The Road
13.     The Mother
14.     The Father
15.     The Beach
16.     The Journey
17.     The Boy

Disc 2

1.     Srey Leak
2.     Me Nea
3.     Rom
4.     Halo
5.     Zanstra
6.     Black Silk (Suture)
7.     Brain Retractor
8.     Dandy Brain Cannula
9.     Rat’s Tooth Forceps
10.     Kerrison’s Punch
11.     Micro Sucker
12.     Window
13.     Daedalus
14.     Magma
15.     Cheata
16.     Sorya Market

"White Lunar is a selection of pieces taken from various motion pictures and documentaries that we have been involved in, namely The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, The Road, The English Surgeon, The Girls Of Phnom Penh and a variety of of pieces selected from our vaults. The first CD has the big themes, the orchestra and the songs and the second CD is fractured, haunting and sometimes badly behaved." - Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

Accompanying the soundtracks on the second disc are four pieces drawn from the Cave & Ellis archives, all named after craters: “Magma” is constructed from a chorus of Warrens singing a pitch-shifted riff, “Zanstra” swarms like a storm of hornets besieging a submarine, “Halo” finds pastoral calm in the eager teeth of defeat and “Daedalus” rises sure as the sun, with dewy flute and fluttering piano motes, before a sudden fade. The sequence is conceived as a suite. “Listen to it as you might listen to an instrumental album” recommends Ellis, as “some kind of trip”.