Slowdive I Am The Elephant, U Are The Mouse ST

Hi,

I stumbled upon this recording done in 1999 by Slowdive on Ebay recently. I was not aware that it even existed, which made even more exciting when I saw it!

Apparently, Slowdive recorded the ST and it was never "officially" released. I have seen postings for it on the Mojave 3 site looking for it from 2006. The director of the film, Forest Wise, supposedly was negotiating with Neil Halstead about the possible official release of the soundtrack. At this point nothing has materialized. Someone has obviously leaked it, though, as I have found several sources on-line where you can download it. What I find most unusual is that several sites have versions of to DL but all of them have a different number of tracks and song titles. It probably means that I'll need to get them all to see if I can find any other hidden gems not on the one that I found originally.

Now that I have the brief history of this out of the effin' way, I would like to talk a little bit about the recording. It does sound alot like a soundtrack as certain tracks are refined and repeated in different incarnations. I refer to this mostly as a score and not as a compilation soundtrack of hits from various bands.

As I'm listening to it, I am reminded of the tone and structure of the final official Slowdive recording, Pygmalion. It is very ambient and I am imagining that these tracks could all have been released as "Pygmalion-Revisited", if they had chosen to do so. Continuing on into the heart of the recording, I hear the song called "Cranium". I am positive that this song was on Pygmalion as I've heard the song a million times. I know that there is no song by that title on that recording and come to realize that it is the song titled "Blue Skied An' Cleared"! They took the song and re-worked it slightly, keeping the same words and basic structure. I'm not sure whether I have an issue with this or not. If you want to put the song on the soundtrack, at least call it by the original title. It is my favorite Slowdive album and it is a beautiful song so I understand why they wanted to use it.

The Rachel Goswell vocals on the song "Ambient" are outstanding. She doesn't have alot of vocals in these offerings but what she does contribute is solid, as usual. She has mostly backing vocals to Neil's lead vocals on the songs with words. There are lots of short, sweet instrumentals to fill in gaps in between scenes, I'm sure, as many movie scores do. I have not seen the movie, yet, but I will track it down soon.

The best song from beginning to end on the version I have is called "Like Up". There are two versions of it on here, the second one called the rough mix. The latter version downplays the vocals and accentuates the instrumental side of it. It seems more acoustic with a little less of the subtle reverb in the final version. A very nice discovery, indeed.

There is a nice little mixed song at the end of the recording called "Watch Me". It reminds me of some of the mixes that you hear on the EP "5". Alot of reverb and drum machine percussion. The best acoustic instrumental is called "Painting/Lost". It is very slow and sweet and left me wanting more of it as it was far too short at only 1:44. There are also six different short versions of an instrumental titled "River Man" . It sounds like a bridge piece from one scene to the next. It is very acoustic but with less strings or keyboard string effects than other similar instrumentals on the recording.

If Slowdive is your thing, it is worth checking out at least one of the versions of this underground recording. I like finding little treasures like this and will delve into the many other variations I've seen on-line of the soundtrack.

Until later,
K