Double Bubble: Supersonic Previewed – Goblin Interviewed
Our favourite extreme music festival – Supersonic – is almost here. We look forward to the treats in store and Jimmy Martin talks to Italian psych/prog horror legends Goblin
Not so long ago, Brian May was heard to remark that Queen’s soundtrack to Flash Gordon marked the first instance of a rock band providing the score to a motion picture. Much as we all love Flash Gordon and the glorious bombast that accompanies it, such a claim is plainly nonsense. Not only does it ignore the frequently meandering and inconsequential work that Pink Floyd delivered to score films like Zabriskie Point, More and La Vallee, and the work of Can on the numerous celluloid projects that led to their Soundtracks album, but it also fails to take into account the twin titans of 70s rockscore lore, whose startlingly vivid work looms large over not only much else of a similar disposition, but sometimes the very films themselves: Florian Fricke’s Popol Vuh, and the Italian maestros of florid grand guignol, the band synonymous with horror auteur Dario Argento, Goblin.
Goblin’s cult following originally began around the time that their score to Profondo Rosso became a chart hit in their native land, somehow taking a sound which occupied similar territory to the ill-reputed likes of Mike Oldfield and Emerson Lake And Palmer, yet injecting it with a dynamism and drama that places them well outside the more self-regarding and indulgent spheres of mid-seventies experimentation
Indeed, such was the impact of Goblin’s music, that the symbiotic relationship between film and soundtrack was often thrown beyond its usual metier. During the making of Argento’s heavenly bloodbath Suspiria, for instance, much of the music was recorded before any of the film was actually shot, and played on set to build up the requisite atmosphere. True to form, it’s genuinely hard to imagine that film’s otherworldly allure being anything like as potent without Goblin’s dark, deliciously overwrought blend of progressive baroque and wild, raw experimentation blasting away in tandem.
Read the full article
http://thequietus.com
Goblin perform for the first time in the UK at Supersonic Festival on Sunday 26th of July and also at the Scala in London on Monday 27th of July
Tickets for Supersonic Festival are available from www.theticketsellers.co.uk
and for the London show from www.ticketweb.co.uk