In 2015,
Spiritualized
founder
J Spaceman
and several of his bandmates performed in London at
Doug Aitken
's Station to Station festival, playing an original live score to American photographer
William Eggleston
's 1974 film
Stranded in Canton
. Along with additional guitarists
Tony Foster
and
John Coxon
, as well as drummer
Rupert Clervaux
(all of whom have ties to
),
Spaceman
played loosely structured cosmic blues themes as the film rolled, controlling the audio output of the movie with a volume pedal.
Music for William Eggleston's Stranded in Canton
captures this performance, providing a sonic equivalent for the film's raw, rowdy portrayals of Memphis in the '70s and the lawless inhabitants of both the city at that time and
Eggleston
's impressions of it. The album consists of ten pieces, which vary from the slow-paced meandering of "It's Not Gospel" to ambient interludes like "Mother's Milk" to full-steam psychedelic burners like the dense "Love for the Asking." The sound here is far more along the lines of
Spacemen 3
's tremolo-soaked minimal blues confusion than
's orchestrated bliss rock. Snippets of dialogue from the film intermingled with the music reinforce just how tuned in to the movie the music is, as the instrumental sounds provide a perfect complement for characters who come across as frustrated, drunk, desperate, and amorous, all painted with a particular shade of Deep South after-hours depravity.
will especially delight those whose gateway to
was the bluesier side of
, and there are slight echoes of
's live instrumental theater-lobby experiments from 1988 that were released a few years later as their
Dreamweapon
album. The way
,
Coxon
, and the rest interact with the film's unhinged characters and grainy scenes feels almost pre-ordained, perfectly reflecting back the brokenness, the simple joy, and the struggle playing out on the screen. ~ Fred Thomas