Oliver Coates / Daniel Blumberg

Pillion & The Testament of Ann Lee

published in The Wire No.506, London, 2020

Excerpt

Bearing a strong distaste for movies about humans in love, reviewing Oliver Coates score for the lauded arthouse film Pillion puts me in a compromised position. Yet his score bears many subtle touches that make me want to see the film. Opening tracks “Sex & Bonfire” and “Parking Warden” forward castrati warbling and Debussyian piano tinkling, but they also have a gorgeous undertow of polychordal strings, swirling as if upon a misty landscape. These strings are foregrounded in “Subdued Something” as if they’re waking up from a slumber. “Walking Up To Ray’s Place” pushes this further, merging the wordless contralto voice with a shimmering yet muffled cello line. The effect is somewhere between an erhu and a vocoder. Only a skilled instrumentalist could come up with this.

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Text © Philip Brophy. Images © respective copyright holders.