6 Music - Music News

Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley and Goldfrapp musician Will Gregory are hoping to perform their new film soundtrack in unusual venues such as art galleries, cathedrals and Roman amphitheatres.

The pair have teamed up to write a score for the 1928 silent film The Passion Of Joan Of Arc.

It will get its premiere at Bristol’s Colston Hall in May with a band featuring six electric guitars, a choir, percussion, horns and keyboards, conducted by Charles Hazlewood.

They are then planning to go on the road, Utley told 6 Music news. “We would like to play it in places that are not always associated with silent film or film and possibly do it at some festivals,” he said.

“We’d like to introduce it into a world where I’m sure people would really enjoy it.” The Tate Modern gallery in London and Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire are among the venues being discussed.

The soundtrack has a “medieval tonality” mixed with the guitars and electronics, Utley said.

"It will probably feed into the creativity of both of us in the future with our bands."

Adrian Utley

Recounting the final days of Joan of Arc, the film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and was lost for decades until it turned up in a cupboard in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital in 1981.

Utley and Gregory trawled through 20 silent films before deciding to work on The Passion Of Joan Of Arc because it was “so suited to music”, Gregory said.

“It’s not got a lot of fast editing. There are lots of very static shots. The first scene lasts 18 minutes. So that gives you, as a musician, lots of scope for writing an extended piece of music.”

Gregory described the project as “a sabbatical” from their normal bands.

“It’s really the time for us to pick out all these things that maybe have been in the back of our minds that we wanted to try, but never quite got round to doing,” he said.

It would also “probably feed into the creativity of both of us in the future, with things that we might do with our bands”, Utley predicted.

But the other members of Portishead and Goldfrapp will not be involved in the soundtrack.