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On second thought, viewers will be hard pressed not to notice Nash The Slash lurking in the shadows tonight at the Bloor Cinema's screening of F.W. Murnau's classic, Nosferatu.
The veteran Toronto composer and rocker, who's kept his true identity shrouded beneath rolls of bandages for 25 years, performs a live rendition of his modern score for the 1922 vampire film. The show marks the independent release of a CD version of the soundtrack, which Nash premiered live at Toronto's Grand Theatre last July.
Nash's film work dates back to his 1975 accompaniment to Luis Bunel's Un Chein Andalou, and continued in the late '90s with The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and The Lost World.
"When these silent films were released into public domain in the '50s and '60s, theatres used to use a sort of mish-mash of classical music to go along with them," he says. "I wanted to get it back to its original purpose: Representing the film."
The neo-classical score weaves synthesized strings and a primitive drum machine together with Nash's trademark electric violin and mandolin. With passages from Faure's Requiem, Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre and snippets of a Romanian Eastern Orthodox choir, the sound is spooky, familiar, as if it was written at the time of Nosferatu but recorded in the early '70s.
"So many people use electronics these days as simply a form of rhythm and making funny squawks," he says. "That's the funny thing about antiquity -- I purposely hauled out my first drum machine, a Roland Rhythm 55, which has a sound nobody's bothered to recreate digitally. The effect is fantastic. Modern electronic geeks are wondering how I got it."
Nosferatu was re-popularized recently in the film Shadow Of The Vampire, a fictionalized account of its creation.
CD ROUNDUP: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, No More Shall We Part (Mute) HHHH (out of five): There's always been conflict in Nick Cave's work -- love poems melt into murder ballads, angels battle demons for the souls of Cave's protagonists, people die, flowers bloom and the listener is rewarded for hanging in through it all.
No More Shall We Part captures Cave on that not-so-even keel, staring at the fork in the road to righteousness and easing his confusion with a dozen pained and beautiful songs.
Not as placid and warm as its predecessor, 1997's The Boatman's Call, there's a lingering sense of anxiety amid the humour of Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow and God Is In The House. But the touch of the Bad Seeds -- the usual suspects and guest vocalists Kate and Anna McGarrigle -- is as dynamic as ever on the haunting Love Letter, Hallelujah, and the delicate march of As I Sat Sadly By Her Side.
Hardly the ideal entry-point for Cave newcomers, this'll put a damper on your dinner party double-quick. But experienced listeners will want to settle-in for another gripping ride.
Creeper Lagoon, Take Back The Universe And Give Me Yesterday (DreamWorks/Universal) HH: Possibly bogged down by the combination of enthusiasm and expectation that greeted their first album, 1998's I Become Small And Go, Creeper Lagoon seem to have lost the plot with this belated follow-up.
What might have sounded, in earlier stages, like smart gusts of sensitive-guy rock come across as overblown gestures, copped from some post-indie-rock how-to guide. Lavish (over)production -- supplied in turn by the gifted David Fridmann (Mercury Rev, Mogwai), ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison and Greg Wells -- just seems to suck the hooks out of the tunes, leaving behind empty, gilted shells. Take Back The Universe sounds like the result of too much time, a too-big budget and too much second-guessing.
DOT DOT DOT: New York City band The Strokes, who blew an Opera House audience away when they opened for Doves last month, have inked a deal with RCA in the U.S.
On a more downbeat note, local record shopping institution The Record Peddler will close its Queen St. W. doors at the end of the month. The store will then move its operation to the Internet, at www.recped.com.