Wednesday 23 January 2019

The Wasted Lakes - Häxan - Witchcraft Through the Ages



TOR61 2019

01 Häxan Part I
02 Häxan Part II
03 Häxan Part III
04 Häxan Part IV
05 Häxan Part V

I've always wanted to perform an improvised soundtrack to a film and last December, I done just that.

Häxan, a 1922 Swedish-Danish documentary about witchcraft, has long been a personal favourite. In its original form, it was two hours in length with dialogue boards. In 1968 a version with William Burroughs narrating was released. This was subtitled 'A History of Witchcraft'. I decided to use this shorter cut of the film.

Next, I asked Jonathan Sharp (The Heartwood Institute) and Joe Hiscoke (Holiday, Ponyland) to perform alongside me.




We had one soundcheck and decided to not prepare anything in advance.

The soundtrack was recorded, in front of the film and audience, on December the 14th and is presented here in full.



The film with accompanying soundtrack can be viewed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSCPSPhN3O4&feature=youtu.be



1 comment:

Jonas said...

Good one, very nice to hear you play, Stephen. As a Dane I may had hoped you had used the original version, also as a longer showing means more music. Some of Part IV reminds me of the Moebius/Roedelius/Schnitzler era Kluster. Now that I have listened to it, it means, that The Wasted Lakes are now on last.fm, hope it's ok I added the picture you posted there.