Lip my stockings. Yes! Please lip them (Soundtracks part 6)

What the fuck is happening to Ireland? Just as we are trying to adjust to the stinking death rattle of our poisoned economy, some utter loons start spraying bullets around the North like it's 1992. Are we in a space/time vortex? If I open my wardrobe will it be full of black Nirvana T Shirts artfully splattered with domestos? Is the statue of Mary outside the Credit Union about to up sticks and march around the town handing out butter vouchers? The mind boggles.


Helloo Helloo. It's good to be back.

Here are two distractions for you if the internet hasn't stopped working due to a Bórd na Móna strike in Crossmolina.

Éoin Butler of the Irish Times and formerly of Mongrel has got a shiny new blog right here. I think he's a mega writer who perhaps had a few fetters put on him by the Times. I predict that the new writing on his blog will be closer to his Mongrel style which always mixed seriousness with utter absurdity.

Ciarán and Gavin from Goldmine Trash have a new project going called Stuck Records. It's in its infancy, but it looks great. In good old Smash Hits style, they seem to be dipping into a very mixed bag of music and rating it. This is a welcome addition in a world of Pavement equals year zero blogs. Yeah and I include mine in that, although I did write a post or two about Glenn Campbell.

Today's soundtrack is one of my very favourites, the Lost in Translation soundtrack. This is not just because the movie contains the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in the cinema, all wrapped up in gauzy pink, like a peach in an expensive stocking.....drooool. Nope. It is because Sophia Coppolla pulled off the tricky feat of entwining the soundtrack and visuals of the film so tightly together that the resulting atmosphere is a model of how to correctly use this type of soundtrack, let's call it the cobbled together variety (i.e. not all the music was written purposefully for the film).

Coppolla is never one to tack a chundering ballad on the closing credits of her movie while key scenes appear projected across a director's chair as Mr Nickleback emotes. Instead, as Lost in Translation elegantly demonstrates, the music enhances the overall feeling of the movie. In this case, a sort of dreamy, jet-lagged disorientation compounded by being in an alien place. Coppolla is so good at this that I often wonder what came first, the scene or the tune. See also The Virgin Suicides, and to odder, less successful, effect, Marie Antoinette.

Here are two cuts from Lost in Translation. The first, by French pop group Phoenix is heard by the central characters during a psychedelically lit night of chaos and fun in Tokyo. Because it is playing inside the film (in a club) I think it is technically called diagetic music. The second, a delicate instrumental piece by Squarepusher, plays out as Scarlett Johannson sits lonely in a window and watches tiny lights flash on in the Tokyo evening with the city spread below her. I think it is non-diagetic 'cos only the viewer hears it. Anyway, that scene in particular is goosebump beautiful and an A1 example of the wonders of music and image combined.

MP3: Phoenix-too young

MP3: Squarepusher-Tommib