By Michael MacLennan
The last weekend of the Glasgow Film Festival 2009 incorporated some very special musical projects with an extra-special focus on the visuals, with the sold-out Modeselektor show at The Arches on Friday night an obvious highlight.
The German dance duo had friends and countrymen Pfadfinderei accompanying them as VJs for their headlining performance. The two groups of artists have now been working together for more than 10 years, long before Modeselektor were feted by the likes of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Pfadfinderei highly successful in their own right, so it was always going to be interesting to see how the comination worked out.
To call it a collaboration might be overstating it; the focus firmly rested on the sonic element of the set. Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary effortlessly showboated with a strong array of songs reflecting almost the full eclectic breadth of their career thus far, from the jittering hip-hop beats of The Dark Side of the Sun to the relentlessly hypnotic electro groove of Sucker Pin and bass-heavy bliss-out Hyper Hyper.
The crowd were generally too busy dancing to stand in rapt attention to the visuals installing themselves on the screen, but the cavalcade of live and animated images which appeared - at least those glimpses I caught - certainly reflected the diverse influences that infuse Modeselektor’s work. It was certainly a fine party to throw on the final weekend of the festival.
A word of warning though; never then try to go along to a screening of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York the afternoon after such a raucous celebration, as the expansive, existential piece of philosophical film-making is likely to further fracture your already-tenuous grip on reality. As ever, I can tell you Philip Seymour Hoffman was superb, but other than that I can explain pretty much precisely nothing about the movie to you.
In a few weeks or so I might be able to tell you whether or not I thought it was any good, but for the moment any more thought on the subject matter will most likely have me writhing around on the floor clutching my head in agony. Perhaps Kaufman broke his brain filming this, maybe he just wants to break other people’s. Either way, it’s got to be at least a partial success.
