Robin Rimbaud was both a friend and collaborator over the years and this CD is his tribute to an important figure in both his life and others'. Using recordings of Derek Jarman's voice as well as location recordings around his home, he creates a graceful and delicate sculpture in sound. This is a close friend's tribute, backed by a profound understanding of the filmmaker's sense of intimacy, atmosphere and drama.
2014 - on the 20th anniversary of the passing of Derek Jarman and this reissue Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) reviewed many of the materials in his archive and discovered four selections that were originally off the release but feel now that they offer another viewing.
"This is a creative mind and man I still miss, but who thankfully and finally seems to be receiving the accolation he should have received long ago." (Robin Rimbaud)
"A beautiful and fragile tapestry. Reflective, tactile and emotional."The Wire
"This music operates a certain unsettling, eerie magic on the listener, sneaking out of the speakers surreptitiously and filling the room like a sudden burst of sunlight. Even those unaware of Jarman's flicks will be moved." NME
This album is a collection of memories taking recordings from spaces that Jarman inhabited or experienced - from the walk to the sea's edge from his cottage in Dungeness through to the roar of London congestion around his Charing Cross flat - Robin has attempted to create a fluid, elegiac sound portrait, a form of resonant landscape painting that weaves through recordings of Jarman's own voice. Robin applied the term 'sound polaroids' to describe these intimate, isolated, improvised moments, the same way a polaroid camera captures an image for a moment, almost dispoable, forgotten, a tiny epiphany that dwells within but surfaces at unexpetcetd triggers.
The majority of the sound here is abstracted and processed through modest means, cutting, stretching and editing tape - acoustic data like this once digitised dissolves into a form that one can mould and re-shape in an almost scultural manner.
2014 version: new design, remastered + unreleased tracks.