08-2003 / The Wire / The wilderness years, Mia Clark

" When we write or play together, we have very personal ideas of what a piece of music is about, " explains Pastels drummer and singer Katrina Mitchell when questioned on the creative process behind the group’s latest project, the soundtrack to a Scottish road movie. " Even when we share them, they’re still basically internalised. Writing the music for The Last Great Wilderness was really interesting ; our aims were external and realised, so the whole focus of the process of interpretation shifted. "
The Pastels formed in Glasgow in 1982, and subsequently released several armfuls of singles, Eps and albums for variuos labels including Creation, Chapter 22 and Glass. Their definite line-up coalesced in 1990 around the trio of Mitchell, bass player Annabel Wright, and singer/guitarist Stephen McRobbie, and their dogged persistence has made them mainstays of Scotland alternative scene. More recently they have found a home at Domino Records, who have provided a platform for their own increasingly prolific Geographic label ; and at the end of last year, McRobbie was involved in setting up a record shop, Monorail, in central Glasgow.
The Last Great Wilderness, meanwhile, is a dark humoured, Dogme influenced Scottish road-movie turned sour. It’s the feature lenght debut from director David Mackenzie, and premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2002. The film’s sinister, thistly charm and haunting atmospherics quickly lead to comparisons with off key 1970s horror movies such as The Wicker Man and Straw Dogs, while the theme of the paranoid rural nightmare is reminiscent of John Boorman’s Deliverance. MacKenzie, who met McRobbie en route to a ToRococoRot show in Edinburgh four years ago, had previously attempted to achieve what he defined as ‘a Pastels sound’ on one of his highly acclaimed series of shorts, Marcie’s Dowry, but it was some while later that the pair began to discuss a concrete proposal. " As we became friendq ", McRobbie relates, " we were aware that David was as serious as us about his work, and that he was really determined to make something original and beautiful. As we started to work on The Last Great Wilderness, we knew that it would be possible to make a connection between our styles that would be good for both of us. "
The Pastel’s music helps smooth the film’s rough edges, reinforcing the elliptical narrative, and providing a suitably intense mood for MacKenzie’s epic images of the Scottish landscape, which were grittiliy shot on DV camera. The score, which was composed in varied segments over the course of filming, and used to edit the shape of the final cut, is largely broken down to ‘character themes’. Through a subtle and effective choice of instrumentation, songs such as ‘Flora Again’ echo the characters played in the film. In this case the young ghostly Flora is represented by Mitchell’s ethereal vocal line and scattered, fragile punctuation from a xylophone. The idiosyncratic and fiercely volatile main character, Vincente, is sonically condensed to a menacing rumble in ‘Dark Vincente’, provided by a vocal pitchshifted through a Lovetone ‘Meatball’ and a parse guitar lead traced by a Wurlitzer keyboard.
" It seemed to us that the main thing was simple ; to enhance the images, but not overwhelm them, " says McRobbie. " It was all about striking a balance between being expressive, but at the same time, secondary (to the action). Most of the choices were a mixture of instinct, design and accident. We used a very similar instrumental set up on everything, but occasionally featuring different aspects as we felt the narrative needed. "
" That’s probably the reason the released version of the soundtrack music is quite short, " adds Mitchell. " When we were listening to it in isolation, trying to decide what should be included or left off, we found that some of the pieces didn’t make so much sense without their images. Maybe in a way, the fact that the pictures and music seem so closely linked shows that we succeeded. "
The Last Great Wilderness features collaborations with a variety of musicians. Bill Wells, the Falkirk based jazz musician valued for his wild, inspiring octet, arranged and played keyboards sections ; Tortoise drummer John McEntire left Chicago to work an intense six days period as producer ; while Pulp vocalist Jarvis Cocker sings the film’s theme tune, ‘I Picked A Flower ‘.
The music with Jarvis is the furthest away stylistically from our own music, " McRobbie points out. " David wanted a triumphant sounding dirty pop song that was in the film, riding high in the charts. We’ve known Pulp for ten years, and the idea of a ‘lothario pop star’ just led to Jarvis ; even though it’s far away from both the way he is and Pulp’s most recent album. But I think he just made it work by getting into character. "
" When the time came to actually cut the music to the pictures, it was in the middle of the night, " reveals Mitchell. " But the way those scenes seemed to blossom before our eyes as the music took its place was totally fascinating and incredible. It felt really natural. "
" The music we made for the The Last Great Wilderness is an almost exact reflection of the type of music we would choose to make at this moment, " McRobbie adds. It led us to where we wanted to go. "