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The Wicker Man

THE WICKER MAN
 
 
The Wicker Man  is a 1973 British mystery horror film written by Anthony Shaffer and directed by Robin Hardy.  The film stars Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt, and Christopher Lee.  Paul Giovanni composed the soundtrack.  The story was inspired by David Pinner's 1967 novel Ritual and centres on the visit of Police Sergeant Neil Howie to the isolated island of Summerisle, in search of a missing girl.  Howie, a devout Christian, is appalled to find that the inhabitants of the island have abandoned Christianity and now practise a form of Celtic paganism.  The Wicker Man is generally well-regarded by critics.  Film magazine Cinefantastique described it as "The Citizen Kane of horror movies", and in 2004 the magazine Total Film named The Wicker Man the sixth greatest British film of all time.  During the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, the film was included as part of a sequence that celebrated British cinema.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

Writing in the Time Has Told Me blog, Paul Martin has a glowing review of the album; he compares Chimera to an Irish all-female folk-rock band of the same time period called Mellow Candle that I am not familiar with.  He also wrote:  "What we have as the musical legacy is a game of two halves.  Half, or perhaps slightly more, of the songs are real vehicles for the girls' voices (all the songs are originals).  These are acid-folk of the very first order . . . and many of the numbers would have fitted deftly in to The Wicker Man film soundtrack [the original film that is, from 1973]. . . .  It should be said that none of the songs on this album have a predictable or conventional pattern to them.  They are beautifully syncopated affairs with interesting vocal patterns, lilting bass lines, etc. – in fact 'progressive' in the very best sense of that often abused word, with rhythms rising seemingly from nowhere and winding back down again. . . . 

 

"All songs on this album are instrumentally very strong and seem to go out of their way to find counter rhythms rather than plump for the obvious, both instrumentally and vocally." 

 

(November 2013)

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