Label: Domino Format: 3CD
Remember when it was all the rage for everyone to do an Eno and describe their music as being soundtracks for movies that didn’t exist? (Barry Adamson, In The Nursery – I’m looking at YOU). Not sure if The Third Eye Foundation (aka Matt Elliott) ever made the same claim for his music, but if he didn’t, then I will, and will go further and say I really need to see those movies. I don’t care if they don’t exist. SHOW ME THEM NOW. On this showing, they’ll be some kind of ’70s Catholic horror movies chucked in a blender with Lynchian cyberpunk stuff (imagine Tsukamoto remaking The Exorcist, maybe), mostly shot through CCTV. Doesn’t that sound ace?
And sounding ace is what TEF is all about. It’s too easy to say “dark drum’n’bass like what the wonderful Witchman used to do”, and for a large part it’d be accurate, though overall I think we’re looking at a cross between D’n’B, Dub and Isolationism. Remember before trip-hop got all dinner party? (For which I hold Portishead responsible, but for which I don’t blame them. It wasn’t their fault). Like that. But with the trip in question being a particularly fucking WEIRD one. You know the type of thing. You think someone’s dying; possibly you. You’re scared the cops will come round. Occasionally, in a moment of Phildickian nuttiness, you may even believe you are the dying cops coming round to bust YOU. Only imagine a version of that which would be appropriate as a soundtrack to The Omen.
It’s not all gloom, though. Well, it is, but it’s fiendishly gleeful doom. The track “In Bristol With A Pistol” is, as you would hope, a nice, dubby trip-hop tune interrupted by wonderfully atonal atonal wonderfulness. Damn, the guy’s got a sense of humour. Even the track dedicated to his much-loved, deceased cat is called “I’ve Lost That Loving Feline”. “Donald Crowhurst”, on the other hand, is as bleak and lost as you’d imagine a track about the delusional yachtsman to be. On tracks like this, TEF edge into Nurse With Wound territory.
Actually, it’s just struck me now. Remember the movie Constantine, which was a really bad bastardisation of the Hellblazer comics? I reckon, had they done a proper Hellblazer movie, some of these soundtracks for movies that have never been made could have found a decent home. Me? I’m happy just to read the comics and listen to this, and imagine what could have been. Anyway, even if you’re not into comics, listen to this and imagine the greatest horror movie ever. With wicked jokes in it.
-Deuteronemu 90210, in ur base killin ur d00dz-
