Music

This year we have appointed a new judge - Paul from Sheffield ukgarage and dubstep producer Grievous Angel - who will be awarding a prize for the film with the best soundtrack. While watching the films he has curated a playlist of the best music tracks from the entire programme and turned them into DJ mixes.

We've collected as many as we can on our #ShAFF2015 You Tube Channel playlist but for the best experience, come and listen in the Showroom bar over the festival weekend with a pint.  The bar is open to the public all weekend and there's free Wifi.

 

Paul's Playlists

I've reviewed getting on for 200 films for SHAFF 2015 and there is an ocean of music in there, much of it really good. Not only is there a load of great music from specialist composers, there's also a stack of great tunes from independent artists and lots of unreleased music too. In fact I was amazed at how much you can only hear on the films - people who not only haven't cut a CD, but don't have a bandcamp or a Facebook page. Though I was able to get hold of a load of music by emailing producers direct. 

To my DJ's ears a lot of the music fell naturally into themes and I'm putting together a few hours worth of mixes to play in the bar while the festival is on. Here's my selections from the music on the films, in the order they'll appear on the mixes. 

(You'll notice that some films appear frequently in the listings. Usually this is because they are the longer films, that use music intensively to help tell the story - Valley Uprising and Damnation in particular are long and pack a huge musical punch. They're also absolutely fantastic films and, in common with the rest of the SHAFF 2015 listings, will significantly brighten your day, week and year when you come to watch them). 

 

AMBIENT MOODS AND GROOVES

So many directors love the visual freedom that a good ambient bed gives them when composing their movie and adventure film makers are no different. These are lovely tracks to mix together, with a great combination of aural beauty and unnerving atmospherics.

A couple stand out as special even in this company. I've put in the complete soundtracks to two amazing short films - the spellbinding cycling short Ghost Peleton, which is simply one of the most amazing pieces of kinetic art you'll ever have the pleasure of seeing, and the Edges of Sanity soundtrack, a fantastic ambient orchestral piece with Charles Dance reciting poetry over the top. Clearly a lot of effort (and budget) goes into these kind of commissioned compositions and they really pay off. 

 

DRIFTY AMBIENT ROCK

They might be using guitars, drums, and occasionally voices, but these recordings go beautifully with the electronic and orchestral ambient pieces. Sigur Ros show just how good this stuff can be, but a special shout goes to New Zealand's Signpost, who produced three cracking songs for the Travailen soundtrack which have never been released. They were kind enough to share them with SHAFF just so we could play them in the bar. Thanks guys!

 

FOLK AND AMERICANA

For me, folk stuff is the heartland of SHAFF films, the touchstone for all that adventure movies represent, and this year's entrants gave us a bumper crop of acoustic loveliness. Ane Brun's startlingly good All My Tears is a massive stand out track and opens the set but it's all absolutely top drawer American folk. And if you, like me, have a tendency to be Bob-phobic, be reassured that this Meet Me In the Morning is one of his absolute crackers, off Blood on the Tracks, the Band in full flow, and oozing deep gumbo funk of the first order. 

 

ROCK'N'ROLL

I wasn't really expecting a lot of classic rock'n'roll but there was quite a good sprinkling of it through a variety of this year's films. These tunes sounded absolutely cracking, really showing the roots of rock'n'roll in both white hillbilly and black r'n'b. This era gets revived every couple of years in club nights run by hipsters bored of formulaic contemporary dance music and you can see why listening to this. So much goodness. The rock'n'roll flows on from the folky stuff beautifully.

 

HARD ROCK - GRADE 6C AND ABOVE

Excuse the bad climbing pun, but as you will discover when you watch SHAFF15 entrant Redemption, grading is riven with controversy and subjective judgements... hence this collection of harder than average guitar music which all share the positive characteristics of groove and tunefulness. Lots of new bands in here but I particularly liked Yamantaka, who give Warpaint a pretty good run for their money, as do Goat. Total Slacker are moderately well known but should be huge - their Sometimes You Gotta Die was a free download on Boing Boing a few months back and it's a delightfully noisy, grinding rock track.

 

POP

It's pop Jim, but not as we know it. All these tunes have got huge hooks, great singing, a nice bit of jangle in the guitars, and by god you'll be singing along to them by the time you're half way through, but other than Imagine Dragons (who are huge of course) you probably won't know these bands. But the songs are just great and they really show how smart modern pop music should be.   

And that's it - that's my selection from the vast amount of great music in the SHAFF2015 films. Come into the festival and you'll hear the selection playing in the bar. 

Price
Free