Carnival Of Souls
The Live Underscore by David Thomas and two pale boys

A true original of low-budget artistry, Carnival Of Souls is creepy, bizarre and dreamlike, at times perhaps resembling a lost episode of The Twilight Zone. Candace Hilligoss stars as Mary, who after an accident sets off for another town and a job as a church organist where she finds herself strangely drawn to an old abandoned amusement park. With its crisp black and white photography and bags of atmosphere, frequent late-night TV screenings in the States have helped turn it into a cult classic. Acknowledged by George Romero as an inspiration for Night of the Living Dead it was surely seen by David Lynch before he made Eraserhead and Blue Velvet. The only feature directed by Herk Harvey it was made in a 3-week break from his job producing educational and industrial films in Kansas. Harvey and writer John Clifford had their eye as much on the arthouse as the drive-in, aiming for "the look of a Bergman and the feel of a Cocteau."

"I grew up addicted to Friday Night sci-fi / horror flicks," the Pere Ubu singer David Thomas said. "The genre had an incalculable effect on the third generation of Young Rock Giants who emerged in the 70s. Now it's time to honor that debt.

"The amateurish enthusiasm and naive intention, as well as lack of budget, of the B-movie encourages a kind of communal abstraction that approaches folk culture, and the frequent lack of a coherent agenda leaves lots of wiggle room for whatever personalized context or agenda an audience or band chooses to overlay. Wiggle room is good."

Time Out described David Thomas and two pale boys as, "A gloriously garrulous, diffidently divine, pumping, wheezy, melodeon-driven, contemporised avant-folk... Twisted and inspired, it is like everything and nothing you've ever heard, [they] are now creating a whole new kind of strange and affecting beauty."

Glenn Max, musical director at the Royal Festival Hall, noted of David Thomas's previous underscores, It Came From Outer Space and X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes, "(They) have raised the standard for live soundtracks."

URL for David Thomas and two pale boys: http://www.ubuprojex.net/pbs.html
About Carnival Of Souls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_of_Souls
Poster art: http://www.ubuprojex.net/production/cosposter.pdf

Performances:
Feb 12 2011 Cafe Oto, London
Jun 4 2011 Cinéma L'Univers, Lille (F)

Questions to David Thomas

Well, if I was being honest... which of course is the bane of my career... I'd say we like doing underscores because it's a bit of a busman's holiday. It's fun artistically speaking and the pressure to be the best thing since sliced bread is off our shoulders. Another voice is setting the artistic agenda (the film), there's a strict timetable (can't stop the film), and our musical "vision" has always had a cinematic component, i.e. we have a visual approach to sound. The amateurish enthusiasm and naive intention, as well as lack of budget, of the B-movie encourages a kind of communal abstraction that approaches folk culture, and the frequent lack of a coherent agenda leaves lots of wiggle room for whatever personalized context or agenda an audience or band chooses to overlay. Plus, we grew up on Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) and learned all we ever needed about the nature of media, film and 20th century art from him.

Why this movie?

I think I covered a little of that above. Yeah, and I'm a sucker for that "to go where no man is meant to go" stuff. B movies like these always centered around one really good idea - unique ideas lead to prison. And these unique ideas crystallized unique perspectives in young kids watching "trash" on tv that was being dismissed out of hand by parents and the Worthies of the community. It was punk. The original punk movement, in truth, happened on tv in America in the early 60s - people like Ghoulardi, Soupy Sales, Ernie Kovacs, et al.

To be clear on what we do: We play a live musical underscore. We've muted out much of the film's soundtrack - including some non-essential dialog. We have composed various musical themes which we improv from. I do a brief spoken introduction and sometimes add comments as the film unfolds. I add vocal improvisations, sound effects and play synthesizer. The two pale boys' soundman, Gagarin, has been drafted into the on-stage band for this series. He is an electronica/ambient artist in his own right.