White Wilderness (Dead Oceans) is the latest album from the San Francisco-based John Vanderslice, and he’s joined on it by the classically trained Magik*Magik Orchestra. MMO artistic director Minna Choi arranged and conducted the Vanderslice-written music on the LP, which was recorded in a whirlwind three-day session by producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Walkmen, Bill Callahan). Vanderslice himself is no stranger to production, running the Tiny Telephone recording studio for 14 years and having produced records by the likes of Spoon and the Mountain Goats. Now he can add MAGNET guest editor to his resume, as that’s what he’s doing at magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Vanderslice: Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are Belgian writers/directors who have quietly made some of the best films of the past 15 years. Using a small group of actors and focusing on lower-class Belgian life, their films slowly but inevitably build to a harrowing climax, where the characters fight for some kind of faint redemption, often against an incredibly bleak landscape: the carpenter’s forgiveness of his son’s killer in Le Fils, Bruno’s slight but significant reconnection to humanity in L’Enfant and, in one of the most stunning scenes I’ve ever watched, Igor’s fulfilled promise to Hamidou’s wife in La Promesse.
Videos after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NKTLnPamK0
