On Record – Barry Adamson: SCALA!!! Original Soundtrack (Mute)

Posted on by
Reply

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Barry Adamson and the Scala cinema in London’s King’s Cross were made for each other. The former Magazine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds member has thrived in a solo capacity, where his work has painted vivid pictures and scenes, many of them cinematic – so he was a natural choice for this project.

Dubbed “The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-Up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits”, SCALA!!! Is a tribute to the adventurous programming, the all-night screenings and live performances that became synonymous with the building. The docu-film itself features interviews with John Waters, Peter Strickland, Mark Moore, Ben Wheatley and Adamson himself, a natural choice to portray these figures and so much more in music.

His score includes references to the cinema’s resident cats, some of the films the cinema screened and a few of the artists that played there.

What’s the music like?

Full of character. Adamson’s score teems with life and is packed with musical incident and colour, painting his subject with uncanny accuracy and using references that knit together really well.

The styles vary wildly and entertainingly, with tracks that range from barely longer than half a minute to fully fledged instrumental songs, each one evoking a scene. The loose limbed funk of Scala Posters (Mondo Bongo) is a highlight, like an excerpt from a detective soundtrack. The dubby As Steve Woolley Sees It and the swirly Acid Celluloid are pocket-sized bits of fun, while the excellent Barry’s Iranian Embassy Blues has a compelling urgency. Spandau Politics is a lot of fun, a kind of one-fingered keyboard bossa nova cousin to Joe Jackson’s Stepping Out.

On occasion some of Adamson’s brief but brooding interludes create a spirit of paranoia and expectation, looking nervously around.

Contrasting with this are the booming drums of Another All Nighter, while the baleful trumpet leading the crashing cymbals of the End Title is definitely calling time on the night, especially when we cut to the lithe bass on its own.

Does it all work?

It does. Short but sweet, this is a fine set of intoxicating music.

Is it recommended?

It is – with the proviso that you should watch the film, too! Barry Adamson has clearly had a lot of fun here, and his musical versatility brings great colour, humour and unbridled funk to proceedings. An old school pop soundtrack, in the best possible way.

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,789 – Thursday 5 February 2026

On Record – David Moore: Graze The Bell (RVNG Intl.)

Posted on by
Reply

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

David Moore is best known for his work as part of New York-based Bing & Ruth, yet here goes it alone on his first official solo piano release.

The cover, designed by Moore and embroidered one stitch at a time, reflects the care Moore takes with his music, looking to reflect personal experiences in transcendental piano music.

The album was recorded live on a Steinway piano at the Oktaven Audio studio in Mt. Vernon, New York. The press release reveals that producer Ben Kane and assistant Owen Mulholland, “reinforcing Moore’s experimental approach…creatively misused pitch-correcting software to orchestrate the different registers of the piano’s tonal profile”.

What’s the music like?

Moore’s signature flowing style is present and correct here, once again turning the mind inwards in a rather magical way. After a hesitant start, Then a Valley releases a torrent of notes, flowing downstream and down the piano with an easy yet inevitable progress. Moore controls the ebb and flow of these waters with expert ease.

It is an immensely reassuring yet subtly powerful sound, a bottomless well of notes that contains a great deal of positive energy but also a subtle, lasting melancholy, explored most explicitly on All This Has To Give through the rumble of the piano’s lower register.

Moore’s intimate explorations create a world of emotion, privately expressed but often giving the impression that he is projecting wide into the natural world. Offering and Rush Creek are powerful examples of this, but there are still moments of contemplation to offset the rapids, with No Deeper and Will We Be There suggesting the softer side of Satie or Debussy.

Does it all work?

It does. Moore’s world is a private yet accessible one, quelling the anxious mind with its thoughts.

Is it recommended?

Yes, enthusiastically. If you have enjoyed the music of Bing & Ruth then David Moore’s solo work is a natural progression. Beautifully played and recorded, it is a welcome antidote to the stresses and strains of modern living!

Listen / Buy

Click here to read Arcana’s interview with David Moore from summer 2020.

Published post no.2,788 – Wednesday 4 February 2026

On Record – Pullman: III (Western Vinyl)

Posted on by
Reply

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

This is the keenly awaited follow-up to Pullman’s second album Viewfinder, released a whole quarter of a century ago.

In that time a lot has changed for the quintet supergroup, not least the diagnosis of drummer Tim Barnes with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. It was this that inspired his colleagues – Ken ‘Bundy K.’ Brown (Tortoise / Directions in Music), Curtis Harvey (Rex), Chris Brokaw (Come), and Doug McCombs (Tortoise / Eleventh Dream Day);– to get on with finishing and recording III, a task with which they were occupied from 2016 to 2023.

What’s the music like?

The press release gets it right, describing the ability of III to “carry forward the group’s signature intimacy and space while embodying the spirit of community that has always defined their work”. These different elements bring a natural push-pull throughout the album.

This is the shortest of the band’s three albums, and the quietest too – but if experienced in the right environment, III is still able to cast a spell.

An early blast of sound and distortion from Bray sets up Weightless, a shimmering tale of woozy guitars, subtle drumming and a musical structure like a densely packed hedge, through which can be glimpsed an active bass line, thoughtfully realised percussion and guitars blowing in the musical breeze.

Thirteen is in the wide open air, building up a head of steam with guitars and percussion on full, but then unexpectedly cutting to nothing more than a flickering candle, sustained by treble guitars and keyboard, which gradually subsides to silence.

October, meanwhile, is an enchanting study in long form, gradually spinning longer, arching melodic figures, before Kabul steps forward with a confidently picked guitar figure and a stronger rhythmic profile, momentum gathering through to the end.

Does it all work?

It does, and III is a rewarding listen, but its relatively short duration means the spell isn’t entirely cast.

Is it recommended?

In spite of the above, yes. III is often a sonic treat, its studies in sound and colour creating pictures that are consistently engaging.

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,787 – Tuesday 3 February 2026

In Concert – Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Vaughan Williams, Sawyers & Elgar @ Cheltenham Town Hall

Posted on by
Reply

Zoë Beyers (violin, above), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Vaughan Williams The Wasps (1909) – Overture
Sawyers Symphony no.6 ‘A Pastoral’ (2022) [World Premiere]
Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61 (1909-10)

Town Hall, Cheltenham
Wednesday 21 January 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo of Zoë Beyers (c) Bill Leighton

This afternoon’s concert in the second season of its Cheltenham residency found the English Symphony Orchestra tackling, appropriately enough, an all-English programme; the Overture from Vaughan Williams’s incidental music to The Wasps being an ideal curtain-raiser with its interplay of incisiveness and eloquence ideally judged. The performance was enhanced by an unerring balance that allowed such as Rita Schindler’s dextrous harp playing to register with real clarity. Hopefully the whole suite will appear at an ESO concert sometime in the future.

The music of Philip Sawyers has appeared frequently on ESO programmes this past decade, with his Third Symphony launching the orchestra’s 21st Century Symphony Project back in 2016. A decade on bought the premiere of his Sixth Symphony – less epic in scope than the Third or Fourth in this cycle and without the searching ambiguities of the Fifth, but a piece whose modest length (30 minutes) or forces (double woodwind, horns and trumpets) likely belie the emotional range of what is being played out across these four compact movements.

Its subtitle evidently an afterthought, ‘A Pastoral’ deftly characterizes this symphony audibly influenced by if never beholden to that by Beethoven. Hence the opening Moderato implies a journey whose destination seems at best uncertain, its accumulating tension carried over into an Andante where scenic aspect is countered with more subjective preoccupations. Nor is the Allegro of an unchecked jollity, the insistent rhythmic profile accumulating an impetus such as takes on more elemental qualities in its visceral latter stages. The final Allegretto surveys all that went before (whether motivically or emotionally) through a process of clarifying and honing earlier ideas towards an ending which, with its evocation of birdsong, affords closure but not catharsis. An ambivalence Sawyers will hopefully address in his Seventh Symphony.

Assuredly directed by Kenneth Woods (below), this first performance was almost all that could have been wished as to accuracy of ensemble or interpretive insight. Good to hear it was recorded for future release, and hopefully Sawyers’s Sixth will receive more hearings before too long.

After the interval, Zoë Beyers repeated what was a well-received account of Elgar’s Violin Concerto from last year’s Elgar Festival. With its opulent scale and solo part that had been conceived for Fritz Kreisler, this could never be other than a testing proposition but Beyers succeeded admirably in conveying that formal intricacy and expressive force which typify this work. The opening Allegro was rarely other than cohesive, thanks not least to Woods’s astute accompanying, and the Andante radiated an emotional warmth with no risk of undue emoting. Beyers had the measure of the lengthy finale, duly coming into her own with that accompanied cadenza such as reviews previous themes at an emotional remove and whose ambivalence resonated long after activity had been resumed on the way to a decisive close. An engrossing performance which concluded this concert in impressive fashion. Woods and the ESO return to Cheltenham Town Hall next month with a new piece by David Matthews, alongside Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (for strings) and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

To read more about the orchestra’s 2025/26 season, visit the English Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names for more on violinist Zoë Beyers, conductor Kenneth Woods and composer Philip Sawyers

Published post no.2,786 – Monday 2 February 2026

In appreciation – Matthias Siefert

Posted on by
1

Today I want to use Arcana to pay tribute to a great friend, who very sadly passed away recently at the age of 63.

I first met Matthias Siefert in the year 2000. We were working at an Internet startup company, Muze UK, whose function was to supply data on music and film to the likes of Amazon and BOL. Matthias was brought in to head up the German department – and later, after the company was absorbed into what was then RED, we ended up working together at PPL for a while.

We formed a firm friendship based on humour (or lack of!), sport and music. Matthias was incredibly well connected and our musical tastes frequently coincided, him approaching from a punk direction and me as a late pop music developer in the 1990s.

Matthias’s connections came through his own love of music and his career as a manager, looking after a host of up-and-coming bands while forming connections to the well-known ones. I have put together some videos of songs we heard at Matthias’s funeral on Friday, along with choice cuts from musical people he knew and who we interacted with. The first is from a gig we went to in 2003, to celebrate the impending release of a new album from Goldfrapp, some of whom he knew well. This was when they were about to go stellar:

Matthias’s funeral began with music from The Coral Sea, the California band he managed headed by Rey Villalobos:

A particularly beautiful moment in the ceremony combined a meaningful montage of photographs and this beautiful early Elton John song, previously unknown to me:

Matthias was good friends with Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith from Tears For Fears – and it was wholly apt that the shuffle function brought this song up to head the playlist in the pub where we had gathered to celebrate his life:

Another connection that Matthias had was with the duo Yello, with both Boris Blank and Dieter Meier. The obvious choice here is one of their stand-out tracks:

One of the many new bands Matthias introduced me to in the noughties was The Infadels, and to this day I am surprised they didn’t make it big, because the songs are brilliant! We went to an old-school, sweaty gig at the Water Rats, King’s Cross, where they dazzled with their special mix of electronic and pop. This song was a particular highlight for me!

There is only one place to finish, however…and it’s with the final song from the funeral ceremony, The Black Keys’ Little Black Submarine. Again this is a song I was not familiar with, but it struck deep with its deceptively pastoral opening and its uncanny resemblance to Led Zeppelin. Listen to the full song, though – especially if you don’t know it, and revel in the moment where the drums kick in!

Rest well, Matthias. We’ll miss you greatly, and our condolences go to your special family and friends in their shock and sadness. I will miss our chats about music and football, more recently from afar, but thanks so much for the music and the memories!

Ben Hogwood

Published post no.2,785 – Sunday 1 February 2026