Movie/Gig Review: Sun Araw vs. Fellini's Satyricon

Sun Araw (not to be confused with space-cultist/jazz-band leader Sun Ra) is on the trippy side of the one-person-who-sounds-like-a-full-band genre. His new album On Patrol is full of tape-delayed guitar, wobbly bass, and underwater vocals. It's relaxed and strange like dub music, but moody and sparse like an ambient film soundtrack.

It's no regular gig that I'm reviewing here though.

He (and one friend) experimented for the first time in Bristol, UK's Arnolfini art house accompanying a film live. The movie was Federico Fellini's decadent, bloody Satyricon (edited). It was well received in 1969, and is considered a classic.

So this was a good starting point -- someone comfortable making atmospheric music bringing an old film's score into the 21st century.

Or at least that's what I thought I was getting. In reality, Sun Araw's drums, guitars, keyboards, and effects pedals were set perpendicular to a cinema screen, on which a film silently accompanied an hour-or-so of noodling. The audience was left neither with a movie they could follow, nor music that stood on its own.

At times, the martial drumming and frantic keyboard noise built up in a way that alluded perfectly to the action on screen -- our Luke Skywalker lookalike, fresh from a banquet, was now somehow beneath decks on a massive rowing boat. He then climbed to the deck to fight someone for reasons unclear. The images seemed to match the sounds tone-wise, but didn't form a narrative.

Worse, the music wasn't interesting on its own. I'm a fan of ambient music -- and listen to plenty of bands others call repetitive -- but it has to be varied in mood and texture to hold my attention. Each new track (or scene) would start with a pre-recorded loop, to which the two players would add a wall of sound. It sounded as unrehearsed as it was rumored to be.

There's no such thing as a failed experiment, though. When he, or other artists, try this in the future, I hope they place more importance on the film's narrative, or admit that the film is just a backdrop to their own music and create something more imaginative.

Score: 2 out of 5
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