Concert For Murnau

Concert for Murnau is on a different page than usual for former Ash Ra Tempel guitarist, kosmische music innovator, and electronic music prophet Manuel Gottsching. Recorded in 2003, this instrumental set is his original score for Schloss Vogelod (or "The Haunted Castle"), a 1921 silent film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. While these compositions have some of their creators telltale hypnotic pacing and slowly building arrangements, the instrumentation incorporates modern classical horns and strings alongside pensive electronics and synthetic rhythms. "The Party" is one of the closest relatives to Gottschings pulsating electronic work, with driving four-on-the-floor percussion guiding chamber music instruments (both organic and MIDI-based, by the sound of it) through nearly ten minutes of eerie music perfect for a haunted castle or an early-80s video game. This sound returns for the computerized camp of the chase scene-ready "High Noon" and the slow-moving dreamscape of "Saint and Sinner." Though just as tense, the majority of the rest of the album is largely rhythmless, made up of either ominous pieces like "Double or Quits" or incidental music like the cello-led "Leitmotiv." Concert for Murnau is interesting due to its vintage alone, being composed and recorded in the early 2000s, made for a film from the early 1920s, and sounding like a collision of musics from a storied past and a future yet to be realized. ~ Fred Thomas