Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Unthanks: Songs from the Shipyards



The Unthanks recorded music by Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Jonsons, and worked with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, for their Diversion series and are now back with some quite stripped down music on "Diversions Vol. 3: Songs from the Shipyards" (Rabble Rouser 2012).

I´m stealing like a thief from The Unthanks´ site:

"Diversions Vol. 3 contains the music created by The Unthanks for the Tyneside Cinema commissioned film of the same name, Songs from the Shipyards – a beautiful and moving film, tracing the story of shipbuilding.

Made by internationally acclaimed North-East filmmaker Richard Fenwick, Songs from the Shipyards is made from archive footage from the past 100 years, and illustrates in microcosm the highs and lows of Britain’s industrial journey. Fenwick and The Unthanks collaborated on the film from the start of the creative process, devising a strong political and human narrative to the story, and creating a unique, powerful, live audio-visual event, in which The Unthanks would perform a live soundtrack to the film.

Diversions Vol. 3 is a studio album that documents a non-sequential ‘best of’ the live soundtrack It is part of a series of side-project releases for The Unthanks, all three of which have been released inside a prolific 12 month period. Vol. 2, released this summer, charted their collaboration with Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, while Vol. 1 featured an exploration of the music of Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons. On that project, The Unthanks resisted the temptation to tackle Shipbuilding, which was written for Wyatt, knowing that the Shipyards project was just around the corner! The Elvis Costello/Clive Langer classic features on Vol. 3 and represents a rare lead vocal by Unthanks pianist and producer Adrian McNally, backed up by eerie vocals from the rest of The Unthanks".

Another great album by The Unthanks!

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