Recording: Matt McLaren / Mike Smith / Chris Cummings

Artist: Matt McLaren + Mike Smith + Chris Cummings

Song: The Bridge [excerpt]

Recorded at TIFF Lightbox Cinema 3 (Nuit Blanche), October 5, 2013.

Matt McLaren + Mike Smith + Chris Cummings - The Bridge [excerpt]

A field recording from my Nuit Blanche wanderings. With patches of rain starting to dampen the streets outside, I ducked into the Lightbox and managed to catch "City Symphonies", an entire programme of silent films with musical accompaniment by these three familiar faces. Rather than traditional piano associated with silent film, this was a more of smooth'n'slinky ride. With Chris Cummings' Wurlitzer front and centre, this sometimes sounded like extended, abstracted riffs on the material you would hear on a Marker Starling album, but Matt McLaren and Mike Smith each added their own ideas, pushing and pulling the music from soulful to sci-fi. This extract is about the first two-thirds of their soundtrack to The Bridge (dir. Joris Ivens, 1928) so you can get a feel for the vibe if you watch it on youtube while you listen.