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The playlist
Pieter Dirkx Young Belgian filmmaker Pieter Dirkx, a graduate from Antwerp’s Royal Fine Arts Academy and St Lucas in Brussels and whose movies have been shown at renowned film festivals from Cannes to Montreal, has just finished what is possibly his most prominent work to date: the music video for “Maniac”, the latest single of celebrated Brooklyn indie rock band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Other than that he was recently invited to the Küstendorf festival by cinema legend Emir Kusturica and is now working on a feature film about an alternate reality where redheads are considered as evil. We asked him to put together what a grey playlist would sound like to him. Illustrator Virassamy
Visage Fade to Grey Polydor
An obligatory choice for this list! This song always makes me wish I had experienced the 80s more consciously.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi Kaneda Victor Music Industries, Demon Records/JVC Records
Akira is one of the things that inspired me the most to become a filmmaker. It’s the most sombre, gloomy animated film I know. The soundtrack is unlike anything else you’ll ever hear and it matches the richly detailed, highly desaturated artwork perfectly.
Clogs The Owl of Love Brassland Records
This sounds like it could have been written by Monteverdi and it features guest vocals by my friend Shara Worden from “My Brightest Diamond”. The song is about an owl that’s awake at night and goes to sleep in the grey morning light.
Wild Beasts Albatross Domino
Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark 2nd Thought DinDisc
For me, “Organisation” is OMD’s best album. It also has the most beautiful and appropriate cover image. The photograph of the desolate volcanic landscape puts the music in an entirely different light.
Another song about birds! This one features an albatross crossing the vast, cold oceans. Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming both have amazing voices and I hope they’ll keep writing many more songs like this.
Grizzly Bear Deep Blue Sea 4AD
Daniel Rossen and Ed Droste sing about a blue sea, but whenever I hear this song I imagine whales and jellyfish swimming so deep that the water becomes dark grey. It’s an especially simple song to Grizzly Bear’s standards, but one of their finest.
Andrew Morgan Five Paintings Broken Horse
If grey had a vocal equivalent, Andrew Morgan’s voice would come pretty close. This almost unknown album is perfect winter music.