VA - Flux Gourmet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2024) [Official Digital Download]

In Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet, a dysfunctional group of performance artists undertake a month-long residency at an institute devoted to culinary disciplines. Food is interrogated for it's sonic potential as the group mic-up, amplify, distort and transform what they cook in front of an audience. The noise that the characters in the film itself make is driven by food blenders, overflowing cauldrons of gurgling soup and sizzling frying pans (courtesy of The Sonic Catering Band), yet the music that soundtracks the culinary capers is engorged with aching melodies and wordless, airy vocals. Contributors include Cavern Of Anti-Matter, Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost of A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Trost's band, Roj (formerly of Broadcast), and Nurse With Wound.

Image, color, light and sound are integrated and heightened to delirious levels of hyperreality, much like Strickland's past works, Berberian Sound Studio and In Fabric. Flux Gourmet very much alludes to his past as a member of The Sonic Catering Band, which he founded back in 1996. The band split on several occasions and got back together to create new pieces for the soundtrack, concocting strange sonic morsels and treating recipes as if they were scores. The lines between what is on the screen and what is on the soundtrack are blurred, with the band (mostly) using the exact same equipment (which they loaned to the production) and recipes as in the film. However, for all the conceptual rigour on display, the music on the Flux Gourmet is ultimately in pursuit of catharsis, as one character concedes. The power of music and / or noise to purge and cleanse it's makers (and hopefully, listeners) of their ills and woes.

Tracklist:
1. Heather Trost - Early Gardens (2:25)
2. Roj - Trip to the Shops (3:14)
3. The Sonic Catering Band - Death Borscht (3:02)
4. The Sonic Catering Band - The Third Gastric Surge of the Night (5:55)
5. Jeremy Barnes - The Funeral Table (3:13)
6. The Sonic Catering Band - Greed (3:17)
7. The Sonic Catering Band - HLA-DQ8 (0:36)
8. Heather Trost - Early Gardens (earlier) (1:29)
9. Roj - Trip to the Shops (footfall) (3:39)
10. Nurse with Wound - Hindu Monastery Breakfast (8:37)
11. Tim Harrison - Ohmlette’s Law (0:29)
12. The Sonic Catering Band - Vegetable Trash (2:20)
13. The Sonic Catering Band - A Sedimental Journey (4:14)
14. The Sonic Catering Band - Baron von Omelette (1:08)
15. The Sonic Catering Band - Dossier de Canteen (1:07)
16. Cavern of Anti-Matter - Insufflation Tube (1:01)
17. Jeremy Barnes - The Funeral Table (gluten-free) (1:52)
18. The Sonic Catering Band - A Pain I Can't Hold In (3:06)
19. Heather Trost - Early Gardens (earliest) (1:42)
20. Dan Hayhurst - Monday Service (3:40)
21. The Sonic Catering Band - Dietary Crash (2:03)
22. Marta Salogni - Cross-Contamination (3:56)
23. Roj - Trip to the Shops (closing down) (3:00)
24. Jeremy Barnes - The Funeral Table (demonstration) (3:11)


Thanks to the Original customer!