proteus (Valmouth Audio/Outside) Rating: NNN
Rating: NNN
This intensely delicate score for John Greyson’s film about a salacious romance between a black man and a white man in the South Africa of yore sounds like a clash between post-apocalyptic futurism and pre-modern primitivism. Local sound sculptors Don Pyle and Andrew Zealley (aka Greek Buck), who also dreamed up Spunk, Queer As Folk’s pounding circuit house theme song, have a knack for encapsulating the character of visual documents in sound. They rise to the occasion here as well, fusing airy chamber strings and electronic ambience with hollow Afrobeat percussion. Hidden Camera mastermind Joel Gibb shows up with his quaint vocals on charming pop closer The Devil’s Mollies, and the frankly physical lyrics are a nice moment of respite after 27 epic tracks of dense instrumentation.
