"Music is well said to be the speech of Engel"

Scott Walker - Blink
Scott Walker - Light

Bonjour. Mike's (Scott) Walker Brothers post got me ruminating so I dug out Pola X from semi-retirement...

Since the dawn of SVC I have been meaning to write a half-decent post on a few artists/albums that really mean something to me and have either been ambushed by something less boring instead or just simply forgotten. Anyway one of 'those' albums is Scott Walker's 'Pola X' soundtrack.

Great mate and funny little man Quinton used to immerse himself in it, bound up in his headphone world, and on more than one occasion he would play it 'at' me. Intrigued I dipped my toe in but was not able to get over the first track 'The Time Is Out Of Joint', I was more into the safer Sun Ain't Gonna Shine sort of thing at the time. He'd laugh at my upturned nose as if i'd just smelt a bad smell and say I should really persevere. Dear, dear, I can't see what fuss I made now. This album is splendid. I say again, this album is splendid. Fred Elliot in the house...

The movie, released Sep 2000 is based on the novel by Herman Melville entitled, Pierre ou Les Ambiguities. The first part of the movie title, 'Pola' is an abbreviation of the French title of Melville's book and the X stands for the number of times the film was edited down. Here's a quick synopsis:

A successful, carefree young writer, Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu), lives in an enormous, pristine chateau in Normandy with his adoring mother, who he calls Sister (Catherine Deneuve). He is engaged to be married to a lovely young woman who adores him, and he has just reunited with his cousin, whom he loves deeply. But Pierre is haunted by a vision in his dreams of a strange, dark-haired peasant woman who attracts him in unexplainable ways. When she suddenly appears, stumbling out of the woods and claiming that she is his long-lost sister, Isabelle (Katerina Golubeva), he falls blindly, madly in love with her. Tearing out of Normandy and heading for Paris, Pierre discredits everything in his life including his family, his friends, and his money. He takes Isabelle to an abandoned warehouse run by a cult, where they live together in deranged passionate misery.

Anyway today isn't going to be that day when I write as much as i'd like on this album, typical, but instead here are a couple of tracks to whet your appetite. First up 'Blink' sung by Kim Gordon. Droney, plucky, finger-tappy, speaky-singy. Lush. Secondly the totally beautiful 'Light' which features the Paris Philharmonic as orchestrated by longtime Walker keyboardist arranger Brian Gascoigne.

Next week in our continuing series of difficult masterpieces, Tilt

Visit - Scott Walker Wikipedia
Buy - Scott Walker - Pola X Soundtrack (if you have a spare 60 quid!)