Once a month or so I have a chat on RNZ on their Afternoons show with Jesse Mulligan. These things start – randomly and stop in much the same way. I hope to keep doing this. For a while at least. I think I started in December of 2015, so now four years into it or so…
For this month I did things a little differently – two albums, two tracks featured but just the one artist. Clint Mansell. I’m such a fan of his work as a soundtrack composer and with Pop Will Eat Itself that I was thrilled to hear his return to singing and ‘pop’ music with a track by track cover of Lou Reed’s Berlin album. That album was a favourite for a time and there’s an interesting back-story around Mansell covering it. I love his cover version – but I don’t think you need any real knowledge of the Reed original to dive in. That said I played a wee snippet of Reed’s Lady Day ahead of playing the new rendition.
I started off though with one of the more recent soundtracks. I played the title track/cue from a movie score called Out of Blue. I haven’t even seen the film (yet) but I love the music. It felt good to play a little soundtrack music in the review slot.
Then I played Clint Mansell’s cover of Lou Reed’s Lady Day from his brand new re-imagining of the Reed album Berlin.
Click here to hear the songs and the chat.
I’ve been geeking out about Mansell so much lately that I even wrote a poem about him. Not that I shared that on air. But you can click that link to check it out if you want.
You can also read my full reviews of the Out of Blue score and the Mansell/Clint Walsh album Berlin by clicking on those links.