FRICTION NYC

The 1915 silent film, Les Vampires is one of most widely celebrated French serials. The film was written and directed by Louis Feuillade and is centered on the actions of a Parisian group of thieves who call themselves “the vampires.” The vampires are led by a charismatic villainess named Irma Vep, played by Musidora, who’s name is an anagram for vampire. Vep and crew utilize disguises, poisonous gases, gadgets, and weapons to wreak havoc on the Paris bourgeois.

Feuillade’s masterpiece was filmed in the back streets and alleys of Paris during World War I, when the city’s streets were largely abandoned lending the film a surreal eeriness. Although the imagery in this nearly seven-hour (10 episodes) classic is bleak and desolate, the film is still a lot of fun. Half fantasy/half reality, Les Vampires is full of suspense and throws out one outrageous plot twist after another.

French duo, Château Flight (Gilbert Cohen and Nicolas Chaix) were commissioned to create a 40-minute soundtrack for special screenings of Les Vampires in 2006 and the results are surprisingly good. Cohen and Chaix worked on the soundtrack while continuously watching the film and had only planned to perform the soundtrack live for one of the special screenings. The duo liked the results so much that they decided to release it via Versatile.

The duo is highly successful in capturing the surrealness of the movie’s imagery. “Untitled 1″ starts off like Pink Floyd’s “On The Run” with a dark psychedelic whirl, while “Untitled 5″ treads in disco-kraut waters accented by some beautiful guitar work. With the film’s images aside, this work stands incredibly well on its own hovering somewhere between mellow eerie electronic music, prog, krautrock, and psychedelia. It’s a haunting, yet eclectic listen.

I’m assuming that the soundtrack was created for a specific episode of the serial, since they average about 40 minutes a piece. I’d be very interested to find out which episode the soundtrack was created for and pair the two up.

Pick up a copy of the Château Flight score to Les Vampires, grab the double DVD version of the film, and hit up the link below to stream the album in its entirety. Also, check out Episode 2: The Ring That Kills of Les Vampires on YouTube (the still above is taken from this episode).

Château Flight  ”Untitled 5″ (stream)

/// Also, congrats to CU on our 1,000th post! ///