volume and their mountains-to-valleys renowned for their finesse, teasing out ol at their disposal. It has unsurprisingly led pproach, but every so often that term has recently with their work on Mark Cousins’ d Promise, an abstract and even-handed s. We managed to check in on Stuart ork and his own relationship with the atom.
Y
ou just released the soundtrack for Atomic, the Storyville documentary that was released last year. How was that originally commissioned? We got asked to do the music for the film before they’d actually gotten anyone to make it. There had been this series of archive films – Jarvis Cocker did one, King Creosote did one – and they’d been really good. We really liked the King Creosote one so we were quite excited about it, just interested in the subject matter and when we found out it was Mark (Cousins) that was making the film that was another great thing too because he’s a really talented guy. We just did it last summer. It’s quite a distinct documentary, very abstract, but the music fits really well. Did you work in tandem with the making of the film? We were talking to them before they’d started making the film and that was with Mark - he was talking about the plans he had and about his vision for it. We were involved right from the very start with what they were going to be doing with the film. You’ve stated that some of the soundtrack work you’ve done has been a very smooth process while others, maybe a bit less so. Where does this one fit in? This was pretty easy, to be honest. I think the tones of the different sections of the film were very distinct because obviously some of it’s quite optimistic and some of it’s quite heavy so it was quite obvious what kind of music would have to work with each element of the film. I think it was just quite easy and it’s a very serious film so it lent itself to our music, definitely. What is your relationship like with the ‘nuclear age’? You probably grew up with films like Threads showing on the TV. Definitely, we did and in the ‘80s it all seemed to be dictated by fear – fear of AIDS, fear of nuclear weapons - the fear of nuclear war was a big thing at the time. When we played in Hiroshima about 10 years ago, we went and visited the Peace Park. It was a really big occasion and it made a big impact on us, so when we were asked to do the film it definitely made sense as something that we wanted to be involved with. 47