Murcof – Lost In Time

murcof-lost-in-time

CD + booklet – Glacial Movements

The composer Fernando Corona, better known as Murcof, needs no further introduction after the outputs of the last decade. Released by the Roman label Glacial Movements, Lost in Time is a 2014 double vinyl release, one that is not as famous as his previous albums and which is now ready to find new exposure. This Murcof project is specifically born as a soundtrack to the eponymous movie by the Canadian artist Patrick Bernatchez. Murcof sets the choir de Les Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal to sing J.S. Bach’s Goldberg variations. The CD edition is made more attractive thanks to the addition of an exclusive epilogue for Glacial Movements. The label jumped at the chance for such a partnership, given that the approach is close to the ambient-drone and rarefied glacial poetics typical of its productions. The movie in question is a dystopian parable set between ice and polar landscapes, the result of two never-ending and intertwined parallel narrations, where the two main characters literally get lost in these surreal spaces of whiteness. So too, Murcof’s sequences, despite the division of the works into discrete chapters, do not seem to have any reference point; they show powerful and elegiac orchestration but they are somehow lost in the dark and distressing emptiness of an inhabited land. The Mexican composer is perfectly at ease with the frames of Bernatchez. Indeed, it’s not the first time he has worked on a movie soundtrack (take, for example Nicotina, La vita senza filtro, a surreal 2004 thriller comedy by the Spanish director Hugo Rodriguez and La Sangre Iluminada, directed in 2009 by Ivan Duenas). In this case Murcof wonderfully connects his passion for classical music with elements of minimalism and the pared-back arrangements he is famous for. Every Murcof record has a systematic approach – in this case the inspiration has a double side, because a specific setting is given to each chapter by moving images from the unconventional movie #narration#. Some may consider this a strong empowerment; others may instead take this as a constraint to the free imagination; in either case they will be moved by the masterful sound.

 

Murcof – Lost In Time