The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
From Scotland:
King Creosote
It was the analogue film made for a digital age – a 75-minute compilation by award-winning director Virginia Heath with a transcendent score by Scottish musician and composer King Creosote.
Now, five years on from the last live performances of From Scotland With Love at the Edinburgh International Festival and Celtic Connections, King Creosote – aka East Neuk-based Kenny Anderson – is performing the show once again with his nine-piece band at Perth Concert Hall as part of a UK tour.
Made entirely of Scottish film archive, Kenny describes From Scotland With Love as a “journey into our collective past”. It explores universal themes of love, loss, resistance, migration, work and play.
Ordinary people, some long since dead, their names and identities largely forgotten, appear shimmering from the depth of the vaults to take a starring role.
But the 53-year-old St Andrews-raised musician who tends to avoid the modern afflictions of social media and mobile phones, makes no apologies for the nostalgic feel to the critically acclaimed show.
“Back in 2013/14 – feeling a bit sorry for myself because I’d broken my ankle – I got word there was going to be this film that was archive footage,” he recalls.
“There wouldn’t be any narration – it would just be my songs. But it wasn’t me putting music to a finished film. This was to be a collaborative element which I didn’t quite get at the time. My initial reaction was just to say ‘no’ because what if I wasn’t able to write songs? But I was talked into it. Once I met Virginia, she described it in laymen’s terms.”
Virginia explained that she would find archive footage to suit themes she wanted to explore.
Kenny would then write songs that fitted those themes and then she would scrutinise his lyrics and go and find very specific images that would slot alongside.
“At first I baulked at that because I’m not a historian – and I come from a long line of non-historians,” laughs Kenny.
“What makes me the official spokesperson for 75 years of Scottish film? But then I thought ‘wait a minute, my family and people I know, and their families, must have ancestors somewhere in this film. This film was full of non-historians and people who don’t think they are worthy. People who are bystanders to history, and shy and don’t want to be at the front or protagonists in all these movements’.
“I thought ‘wait a minute, my gran is of an age where this film spans her lifeline. I was thinking of my dad. So weirdly I was able to put people I know or stories that I’d heard in the film.
“I also wanted to be quite nostalgic about it all, because I do believe the best is behind us.”