Customer Reviews

New Music for Silent Films

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Practically no one watches silent films anymore and that's a great shame. The 3 members that make up the Alloy Orchestra realized that and composed new original scores for some of the great silent classics using a strange combination of synthesizers, accordions, saxophones, drums, gongs, corrugated metal, and other percussion instruments. The first time I saw them was when they performed METROPOLIS a few years ago and I was hooked immediately! I've seen them many times since.

Their version of METROPOLIS is perhaps the most popular score they've done -- and with good reason! The film is a science fiction classic, but we've only been able to view it with either a dull organ score in the background or the rerelease in the 80s with music by Pat Benatar ad others. But the Alloy Orchestra version is the only one to do justice to it. It has a beautiful, quirky, and haunting score that alternates between mechanical sounds for the machinery scenes to soft harps and synthesizers for heart-rending scenes.

If you've already seen the Alloy Orchestra perform METROPOLIS live, you will want to own this (as well as their CD "Silents" which includes more selections from METROPOLIS). If you haven't and you have a taste for the unusual, give this CD a try. The only film I've seen featured on this CD is METROPOLIS. But I enjoy listening to the other selections as music on their own. Hopefully, when the Alloy Orchestra returns to my city, they'll perform some of the other films I never got to see yet. Until then, I'll watch METROPOLIS on my DVD player with the sound turned off and play the selections from their CDs.

The next time you watch an old silent film, consider the music, the performers just might be the Alloy Orchestra. They are among many new--some might term "avant-garde"--artists to score new music to old films. The Alloy Orchestra, in particular, is famed for using "junky" percussion and loud noises to stomp excitement into silent films.

They favor anything they can beat a stick at, drums, old radiators, chimes, metal objects, trashcans, anything; and the more junky, the better. The addition of synthesizer allows the ensemble to recreate almost any sound, melody, and mood possible in a movie. The Alloy Orchestra is composed of Ken Winokur, and Terry Donahue on percussion, and Caleb Sampson on synthesizers.

The album, New Music For Silent Films is a compilation of pieces the Alloy Orchestra has scored for five films; "Metropolis", "Aelita, Queen of Mars", "Sylvester", "The Wind", and "First Night". I was disappointed F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu was not included among the selections. rkchin.