#47 Feat. Hype in Electronica

Stunning hour-long soundtrack from Regis and Anni Hogan; a suite of gentle, highly evocative nocturnes that weave and wind through wonderful melodic episodes and glistening atmospherics, landing somewhere between shoegaze bliss and melancholy romance. Anni Hogan and Regis have collaborated many times before - most notably on the Reversing Into Tomorrow tape for our Documenting Sound series, and on Regis Hidden in This is the Light That You Miss album last year. This score for Hospital For Beasts (shot by director Andreas Kiriakou, and acclaimed cinematographer Antonis Kounellas) is on another level entirely from anything weve heard from the duo before though. Featuring sounds collected by Karl OConnor then arranged into original compositions by Hogan, the music here plays out like a fever-dream; every time you think you catch a glimpse of something tangible, it all turns to vapour, blurred into the sublime. Of course, Hogan brings over 40 years of experience playing piano and synths for legendary new wave, goth and industrial bands including Marc Almond, Deux Filles, Nick Cave, Jacques Brel, and Barry Adamson, to name just some, so when factored into the romantic gloom of Regis blossoming post-techno phase, the elements swirl into something multi-dimensional and new. While weve enjoyed everything weve heard from the pair so far, they hit on something thats more fully realised here, producing almost an hour of music thats in places almost unbearably moving; a flourish of evocative vignettes, a thorny bouquet of keys, heatsick strings, flute and spectral electronics spun out by an encroaching industrial thrum thats always lurking. Moving between daylight, dusk, and nocturnal moods, the soundtrack is largely shorn of percussion and tendered by Annies classically expressive keys. Imprinted with the tonalities of traditional strings and head-less choral arrangements that hint at ancient Greek musics, the whole thing is set around reverberating room/field recordings, with Annis voice echoing through like pretty much nothing weve heard before. Weve literally no idea what the film is about, but trust when we tell you weve been in tears just listening.

Regis, Ann Margaret Hogan