watch the dark clouds bruising...

The Shane Meadows/ Paddy Considine film Dead Man's Shoes was on Film Four the other night. Even though I've seen it a few times and was getting ready to hit the hay, I stayed up late and watched it through. I went to bed feeling disorientated and troubled. It grips some deep fold of matter in my brain in a way that few other films have ever done. I'm not sure I know why it does this. The film is far from perfect; its rough-shod and simple, like a cheap western. Its the revenge story of a soldier (Paddy Considine) who returns to a dreary midlands town to exact murderous revenge on a bunch of druggy scroungers who abused his intellectually disabled younger brother years before. They ultimately force-feed him LSD and march him out to a ruined castle in the fields behind the housing estates to perpetrate a horrifying final act of abuse.



Although the revenge scenes are far-fetched, much of the film is horribly real. The scumbags are so acutely observed. They're a decrepit shower of bollocky, pill popping flotsam in their 30s and 40s who stalk around a featureless town in the hills, listen to shit music, and fill up on lager and cocaine in the dim stink of their semi-detached houses. Kells, where I grew up has plenty of merits and its not a patch on the drab place depicted in the film, but like any small town in Ireland it has its characters, and I suppose some of the dudes in Dead Man's Shoes remind me of people from around the town. Probably more so than characters depicted in some Irish attempts at social realism I've seen, such as the RTE 2 drama Pure Mule (which was good too). We also have various ruins, and of course 'the fields at the back of the town' where shadows lengthen and people lurk. Anyway, the film's impact has less to do with revenge and more to do with the horrors that happen in small places, really horrible rancid creepy things. Things that become footnotes in local papers while the people who perpetrated them linger on. Small places are great at keeping secrets.

There is a music related point to this post. Dead man's shoes has a wonderful soundtrack, released on the Warp label. Watching the movie was my first introduction to the solo songs of Adem Ilhan from Fridge. His album Homesongs quickly developed a true and lasting friendship with my ears that is as strong today as it was in the first flush. There is a point in the movie just after somebody's head is split open and the scene cuts to a car driving through the countryside. The plaintive and skeletal opening bars of 'statued' plays over the scene. It has an intimate folk-inflected tug that fits the film beautifully. At other key scenes are perfectly judged inclusions from Smog, the Earlies and finally in the most heart breaking moment of all, Arvo Part. Its such a fuckin well-judged soundtrack and its tied to the movie in a very meaningful way.

MP3: Adem-Statued

In other news State Magazine launched today with some sort of mad Ham Sandwich carry on in Tower Records. I'm keen to know how it went?? There is a nice little mention of Lolo's mixes in the mag which the compost heap is very grateful for. Good luck State!

Also to whoever wanted the Jeff Magnum and Chris Knox track reposted, I'm gonna put it up here later on.

And here it is...Jeff and Chris (aka World of Wild Beards) playing Ghost. Chris Knox was in a pioneering New Zealand Lo Fi band from the 80s called the tall dwarves. I don't know much about New Zealand Lo Fi but I'm gonna download some of that loopy 4 track shit and blog it up as soon as I get a handle on it.

MP3: Jeff Magnum and Chris Knox-Ghost

See Yis!