BRITISH SEA POWER’S WIDELY PRAISED SOUNDTRACK FOR THE FILM FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND IS TO BE RELEASED ON CD AND VINYL IN DECEMBER.
In January 2013 when the Penny Woolcock-directed film was first screened as part of BBC4’s STORYVILLE strand, viewing figures nudged 500,000 – twice the usual audience for this particular slot.
Woolcock’s extraordinary film featured a fantastic array of vintage footage of the British coastline assembled from the BFI’s Archive.
Travelling from 1901, through both World Wars, into peacetime and the modern age, FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND showed the British coast as a place of leisure, industry and wild nature: a woman scaling a sheer cliff face to collect rare eggs, ballet dancers on the Sussex shoreline, émigrés from the Caribbean and India, a British Rail hovercraft…
For all this the British Sea Power soundtrack was a fitting audio counterpart, consisting of atmospheric re-workings of several previous BSP songs. It was recorded in Brighton and mixed by Ken Thomas, and the album version will feature 18 pieces of music (including a bonus track not used on the original soundtrack). To celebrate the release, BSP will be doing a unique live performance of the full soundtrack beneath London’s Cutty Sark clipper ship to accompany a screening of FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND. It will take place on 5th December, and ticket buyers will be allowed to tour the ship one hour before the performance begins, and will also have access to William Turner’s new exhibition TURNER AT SEA – a full-scale examination of the painter’s fascination with the sea – at the National Maritime Museum. Tickets will be on sale from Royal Museums Greenwich website from 1st November, here.
The BFI’s DVD release of Penny Woolcock’s FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND was reviewed by The Mouth Magazine in January this year, here.