11 playlists, newest first
music to go with our stories, and alternate soundtracks to films we love.
14 tracks · 1 h
arca co-produced most of björk’s vulnicura. two years later came “piel”: her own voice, in front. music from makers who stood behind the sound, stepping in front with their own voice: björk, sophie, simón díaz, laurie anderson, and arca herself.
listen →12 tracks · 56 min
a jewelled book went down with the titanic. a bookbinder made it again from the drawings, lost it to a bomb in the blitz, and finished a third in 1989, at 81. music lost, wrecked or left unfinished, and made again, from mahler’s sketches to a lennon demo.
listen →watch the short ↗11 tracks · 48 min
in september 1963, after a bomb killed four girls at a church in birmingham, alabama, nina simone said she tried to make a gun. her husband told her to use her music. music by those who did the same, from that year on.
listen →9 tracks · 36 min
refn showed gosling kenneth anger’s scorpio rising before anything else, played kraftwerk and eno while he made drive, and called it pretty in pink with a head smash. music the film points to, scene by scene.
listen →8 tracks · 36 min
the screenplay of blue velvet opens on shostakovich’s fifteenth symphony, and its drafts give dorothy “blue moon” and frank a screamin’ jay hawkins tape. the music the film almost had, in the film’s order.
listen →13 tracks · 47 min
in july 2006, as italy’s crowds chanted his riff, jack white said he loved that most people chanting it had no idea where it came from: “that’s folk music.” music that left its writers for the crowd, from a first world war march to the riff itself.
listen →watch the short ↗10 tracks · 44 min
one bright afternoon in 1871, too feeble to sit for her portrait, anna whistler went down the thames with her son. that evening, at the studio window, she told him it was “yet light enough” to make a moonlight picture of the thames. this follows that hour, from the river by day to the moon at the window and the night pictures he came to call nocturnes, and ends on the word a child gave her portrait: peace.
listen →watch the short ↗14 tracks · 45 min
george martin played the solo in “in my life” on a piano at half speed and sped it up, an old trick he called the wind-up piano. this follows sounds turned into other sounds, sped up and slowed down, from les paul and bach to prince and dj screw, and ends on a harpsichord at last.
listen →10 tracks · 58 min
ingmar bergman ended the seventh seal on a dance of death: death leading the living over the hills. this follows that dance over six centuries, from a pilgrims’ song of 1399 and the hymn the film opens on to scott walker, johnny cash, a church organ in gothenburg and rachmaninoff’s last dance.
listen →watch the short ↗14 tracks · 57 min
gerald holtom drew the peace sign in 1958 and said it was a picture of himself, in despair. this is music from his story: the march it was made for, the sign going round the world, and the words on his gravestone.
listen →watch the short ↗15 tracks · 1 h 1 min
joseph cornell filled his boxes with europe and never went there. this is music for what he put in them: the ballerinas and stars he collected, the records he found, and the jewel box he made for taglioni, whose ice is glass.
listen →watch the short ↗
