Malcolm Lindsay

Dark Water

(self-released)

HAVING only seen the trailer for Oscar van Heek’s film Dark Water – no relation of the Japanese horror movie or its US remake – I cannot speak for the interface between the imagery, some of it shot at Gourock’s superb outdoor swimming pool, and Malcolm Lindsay’s score. There is, however, much to enjoy in the atmospheric music, and in particular the singing of soprano Marie Claire Breen, a former Scottish Opera Emerging Artist who has also been a significant contributor to the imaginative work of Noise Opera.

Lindsay and van Heek were inspired by another small-scale opera initiative, Scottish Opera’s 5:15 series, which explains the presence of the Orchestra of Scottish Opera on all but one of the seven pieces here. They are under the baton on Greg Lawson, who is in the same role with the GRIT Orchestra playing the music of Martyn Bennett at Celtic Connections this year.

Those are not the only well-known names on-board. The libretto that was fashioned from van Heek’s script is by Paul Joseph Moore, formerly of The Blue Nile, and tenor Jamie MacDougall duets with Breen on central track, Forever Free. In a reversal of the usual order of things, all of this music was created before a frame of the film had been shot, so although the album stands alone, Lindsay’s writing helped structure van Heek’s filming and editing.

Keith Bruce