FLUX GOURMET (OST)

A vibrant, four-coursed, 23-track double album, 'Flux Gourmet' includes contributions by Heather Trost, Jeremy Barnes, Marta Salogni, Cavern of Anti-Matter, and Roj (formerly of Broadcast), as well as Strickland’s own compositions as part of The Sonic Catering Band.

British Director and sonic pioneer, Peter Strickland, known for The Duke of Burgundy (2014), Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and Björk: Biophilia Live (2014), has always pushed visuals and narrative to absurd heights. In Flux Gourmet, performance artists taking part in a residency dedicated to sonic catering combining cooking, sound and theater. Food is amplified, microphones are jammed against blenders, and the sizzling sound of the frier turns becomes an ominous rattle.

The film’s soundtrack is equally as process oriented, experimental, and kaleidoscopic as its protagonists’ practice. Contributors also include, Jeremy Barnes, Tim Harrison, Dan Hayhurst and Nurse With Wound. 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 its 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.

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 its makers (and hopefully, listeners) of their ills and woes