Skin

A bit of an adventure today, particularly in light of last night's snow, as Tom and I set off to Manchester for our annual rugby match. We normally go to the Sale v Leicester match after Christmas but finding it was at Sale this year instead of closer to home we rather foolishly thought we'd give it a go. Hence we were out for just over twelve hours today in order to catch an hour and a half's entertainment (actually it's 80 minutes for a rugby match and we missed the first 10 - and the first Sale try - because of the sheer horror that was the traffic out of Manchester on the Trafford Road.) It did look for most of the match like we were going to witness our first ever Sale victory but they even managed to throw that away two minutes from time to lose by two points. Still, we did  have an adventure - and we did meet some nice people along the way: the Sheffield Wednesday fan on his way to Blackpool who'd not been on a train in 40 years, the charming drunk from Northwich on the number 67 bus who had to pee in a pint glass just by Salford Shopping City because he couldn't make it back to town (he was very apologetic about the whole business) and an actual Mancunian with an accent so thick it was like a foreign language... It wasn't quite a case of all  human life being here but some life certainly was... There were some very picturesque knackered pubs, tattoo parlours and secondhand book shops by the Shrudehill Interchange but unfortunately I didn't have time for a wander with the camera, though I did manage to leave it on and run my battery down. Today's blip is bought to you courtesy of my ipad - never let it be said that I don't embrace new technology...


#6. ‘Under The Skin (OST)’ by Mica Levi

I would say that this soundtrack, like the movie from which it comes, creeps up on you a bit but given the predatory huntress theme we’re dealing with here that might be a somewhat unfortunate choice of words. Certainly though, for an abstract and often strident melange of discordant strings, menacing drones, metronomic clicks and muffled thumps and bangs, this is a curiously distracting and compelling listen. You feel a little bit like you missed something just on the edge of your hearing (or comprehension) and really should put it back on and start again. Tonally, it sounds a little bit like Levi started with that famous little Bernard Hermann sample from ‘Psycho’, transcribed it for her own cello and then worked it through a series of variations for the fifteen piece orchestra that the film producers had helpfully put at her disposal. Again, it’s tempting to say that the whole album makes for a curiously immersive experience but, given the back-story, it’s really up to you how far you want to let yourself sink in to its seductive blackness.

Under...