MOVIETONE "Peel Sessions 1994 - 1997" by Textile Records
Movietone captured a quiet chaos in three Peel Sessions from the late 1990s, layering narcotic wisps of vocal melody atop a roiling surge of drums, guitars, piano, strings and reeds. This Textile compilation collects live recordings from the band’s very beginnings, shortly after the first single in 1995 to the period just after 1997’s Day and Night, when founders Kate Wright and Rachel Brook were already working out songs for 2000’s The Blossom Filled Streets. Listening to them in sequence, you can hear Movietone evolving from a soft focus, trance-y, quiet core outfit into something wilder, denser and full of jazz-like squalls and flourishes.
Matt Elliott, later of Third Eye Foundation, plays guitar and other instruments for all three sets; in the last one, he had already quit the band, so his piano playing on, for instance, “Hydra” is here but not on the album version. These tracks have never before been released on any physical format, so unless you tuned in at the time, you haven’t heard these particular versions of Movietone’s work.
Movietone captured Peel’s ear early on, because the band came from a Bristol scene he was familiar with, and emerged from a band that launched two other 1990s psychedelic powerhouses: David Pierce’s Flying Saucer Attack and Elliott’s Third Eye Foundation. Without knowing much about Lynda’s Strange Vacation beyond that, it’s worth looking into further. One of the loudest, most dissonant and striking tracks from the first session, “Stone,” is, in fact, a Lynda’s Strange Vacation tune; it sounds like early Sonic Youth but a little more somnolent.
This first session also picks up the 1995 single “Mono Valley.” It’s calm on the surface, with its slow, shimmering guitars and murmured verse, but it rolls with a subdural violence, the clang of sudden, loud piano chords and, at one point, the sound of breaking glass. (According to the album notes, they did that live in the studio, smashing a glass in bass player Matt Jones’ instrument case.) It’s lulling but full of threat, like the roof caving in while you sleep.
The second session, from early 1996, previews songs from the second Movietone album, Day and Night. “The Voice Came Out of the Box and Dropped Into the Sea” was an early version of “Useless Landscape.” It is noticeably more lyrical and melodic than anything from the first session, constructed out of acoustic guitar, a trebly electronic keyboard sound and swishing, swaying drumbeats. A clarinet floats by at one point. Still even in this pastoral cut, a sinewy electric guitar saws up from the depths; it’s a bright bauble sucked down into an undertow of noise and distortion. “Chocolate Grinder” follows a low-toned riff through bomb-whistling effects and squiggly scratch sound, syncopated, but gently, so that you hear a modified funkiness as through a thick wash of codeine. Elliott intersperses samples from the band’s first single into this live version, a sound that was notably absent from the album cut, which was re-titled “Night of the Acacias.”
The final three tracks come from August 1997, oddly enough, the same day Princess Diana died. There are only three tracks, rather than four, but they are all good. “Hydra” follows a sinuous, jazz-like groove, bristling with off-beat drums and swelling with thickets of saxophone. You notice immediately how warm and full bodied it is compared to the 1995 session’s ghostly tones. “The Blossom Filled Streets” is more whispery, but it moves with a subtle, in-the-pocket sophistication—the bass is lovely—and again, fills out the corners with warm sax and twinkling piano. “Facing West from California” likewise slants towards jazz without losing the subterranean tensions of Movietone’s earliest work.
The three sessions give you a good sense of how Movietone developed over time, from the pure chaotic rock energy of “Stone,” to the trip-hoppy lull of the first session, to the more elaborately arranged and instrumented jazz-leaning grooves of the final recording. If you’re a long-time fan, of course you’ll want it. It’ll let you trace the way Movietone’s songs developed and how key players like Elliott shaped (or later didn’t shape) the sound. But if you’re new to Movietone, it’s also well worth hearing, a relic of the “quiet is the new loud” age that is so much more than that.
