January

Barry Adamson – Scala!!! (Mute)

Finally arriving after the screening of the critically acclaimed documentary film of the same name, ‘Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits’ is the soundtrack to the notoriously renowned cinema based in London’s Kings Cross which spanned the breadth of the creative years from the 1970s to early 90s. The film was released in 2023 and premiered at the BFI London film festival.

The 22-piece track list delves into the subterranean, weird world of the Scala cinema which witnessed eye-popping film programming, with double-feature screenings, all-nighters, live performances and showcases for risqué avant-garde turned legendary filmmakers like John Waters, Russ Meyer, Derek Jarman and David Lynch.

The release opens on the beating drums and acidic surf rock guitar of the opening title track and onto the estranged harpsichord and percussive shuffle of ‘Scala Posters (Mondo Bungo)’. The ‘Jazz Devil’ maestro inserts a lot of his own feel into the release as seen in the 1930s swinging brass of ‘Babs Johnson is Divine’ – citing the protagonist in the Waters classic ‘Pink Flamingos’ – and the cinematic electric guitar fusion of ‘Iggy and Lou and Mick Rock Too’.

A multi-instrumentalist and genrelist as Adamson is there’s electronic experimentation in the track list too such as in the Numanoid alien terrestrials of ‘Acid Celluloid’, the industrial tribal march-beat of ‘Barry’s Iranian Embassy Blues’ with its squelching ectoplasmic ethereality and then the Kraftwerk inspired ‘Spandau Politics’, with short pieces like ‘Pink Narcissus’ conjuring up the dark armpits of sex, drugs and what’s no one’s business goings on in the auditorium.

The bossy tones of ‘Jane’s Day Out in Court’ with its prominent drum pattern and curdling guitar is another highlight on the release while the memorably sticky floors of the cinema are best portrayed in the Velcro croaks of ‘One of Us / Sticky Floors Atmos’. The cinema sadly closes its doors in 1993 on the legal fiasco over Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ with the classical piano and cello bow out of ‘The Party’s Over’ – cue the boozy big band end titles. A crisply produced time warp machine back to the glory days of a cultural institution.

‘Scala!!!’ is out on now on limited edition coloured vinyl, CD and digitally.