Getting the picture

Back in 2018 director Paul Wright’s film Arcadia premiered at the London Film Festival to great acclaim, not least for what the Guardian described as a ‘superb score’ of ‘eerie original music’ by Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory. Arcadia’s fast-paced collage of archive film focuses on the divided cultural heritage of Britain, racing across a hundred years of unsettling folk rituals and rural life through to punk and rave culture, and Adrian and Will’s eclectic soundtrack weaves an urgent emotional undercurrent throughout. Now, some four years later, the pair have taken the film back out on the road with a live performance of the music that a Bristol audience will be able to catch at St George’s on November 11.

Coming from Bristol and Bath respectively, it was a local connection that originally brought them into the project, as Adrian recalls: “I was first involved through Mark Cosgrove at the Watershed. Colin Greenwood from Radiohead – who’s a friend of mine – was originally involved but he was too busy at the time. So I said ‘OK, I’ll do it with Will.’” The pair had ‘previous’, of course, having written and performed the acclaimed live soundtrack to Carl Dreyer’s silent epic The Passion of Joan of Arc. But this turned out to be quite a different proposition, not least because the film was still being edited and assembled while they were writing the music for it. Adrian: “They sent us some short bits of early edits and we wrote about six or seven pieces in a day. Sometimes we can move really fast. We both already had things in mind and we got on with them together. They weren’t written ‘to picture’ but quite a few remained in the final film. After that we worked separately and got together to rework our stuff but they were still editing after we’d been writing the music so bits suddenly didn’t fit any more. Tim Allen, the engineer who was mixing it with me had to do a quite brutal edit of an orchestral piece to fit the new edit.” Will:”There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing – it was quite nice because some things we sent they would use somewhere unexpected. It was kind of fluid and a nice way of doing it – but it took a lot of time.”

One of many sinister rural rituals from Paul Wright’s film Arcadia

Once it was in the can, however, the pair felt they were done with it. Will: “It took such a long time that immediately after we finished we wanted to clear our heads and get away from it.” Adrian:”We’d thoroughly had enough – which is how it goes. It was done, signed off and off you go to something else. It was a hell of a lot more work than we thought it would be. But it was a good thing to do.” 

But then there was Brexit, the pandemic, a drift of politics and division in the country and the film’s themes of class division and land ownership took on renewed significance for them. Adrian: “It seemed more relevant three years on. Even in that short time it felt like the country had become more fucked under Boris and all that lot. It seemed more relevant to do it live than when we first wrote it.“ Will: “He (Paul Wright) really got to the reality and the spirituality of it, the spiritual connection with the land you live in and how that’s been eroded. I guess it’s about urbanisation and people not relating to the countryside any more. (Arcadia) was slightly ahead of its time, it’s now even more relevant than back then, inasmuch as the land is facing even more abuse. They’re talking about fracking again – I can’t believe it! So it felt timely to take it out as a live version now.”

Easier said than done, however. The Joan of Arc project had been conceived for a specific live performance ensemble from the start whereas Will sums up the Arcadia process as “most of it was just jamming and noodling with only odd bits of strings and choir that were written down as dots.” Adrian: “We could do whatever we wanted, we could go from a 303 bass line with an 808 drum machine straight into a full orchestra and then on to electric guitar and drum kit. The film was constantly changing and so was the music.” How to make it playable, then? Enter composer and multi-instrumentalist Ross Hughes, the first choice for both of them. Will: “Adrian and I, We were like “OK, but our brains are worn out now and can’t think about doing that”. So we gave the project to Ross and very cunningly lit the blue touch paper … it was joyful to watch it all happening without taxing our brains too much! Ross took on the job of converting it into something other people could actually play. He did an amazing job. It really is a faithful reproduction of the meanderings that Adrian and I came up with.”

But who would play it? Again – it took some thinking about. Will: “We wanted string players that could sing and singers that could play drums and guitars, people who could multi-task. We found these rather wonderful and interesting people who are slightly outside the classical norm, who straddle different worlds. They are interested and interesting, with their own voice – not like session musicians who turn up and just play the dots.” Adrian:”All the musicians are amazing, all doubling up and playing other stuff.” Adrian was concerned about one important element of the performance, having successfully approached enigmatic 60s folk legend Anne Briggs for permission to use her songs in the film. He was introduced to Lisa Knapp (pictured above), a contemporary singer whose voice has been compared to Briggs’. Adrian:“Lisa’s really risen to the occasion, she does amazingly. It’s quite a challenge because her voice is being processed through an old Korg synth that Will is manipulating. It’s supposed to be tracking her pitch but it rarely does which is part of its charm but pretty brutal for her. She’s just brilliant, though.” And, of course, there were a couple of other musicians that had to be involved … Will: “Now we’re having to play it as well, of course, and it’s difficult, it’s tricky! We’d complain to Ross and he’d say ‘It’s what you played before, now do it again!’ so we were both rather brought to book.”

The live show has had a couple of outings already, notably at Green Man, where Adrian felt it suffered a bit from the usual festival cross currents of sound. The experience has made him look forward to the Bristol performance even more: “I like doing festivals because you get an audience of people who wouldn’t normally choose to come to something like that. It’s challenging but worth it. But St George’s will be so great – I’m really looking forward to that one because the sound is always so good and there’s no noise coming from elsewhere. That said – it’s very full on stuff!” And Will agrees: “I’m a big fan of the whole live idea – there is a purity, there’s that unbeatable thing of all being in the room together, sharing it. This whole project has been really great – I love it and it’s the way forward.”

Arcadia Live is at St George’s, Bristol on Friday 11 November