Something of an oddity, this one. It might not be unusual for a soundtrack album to have more music on it than on the actual film soundtrack but this one turns out to be several times longer than the short film by Jack Laurance that it accompanies. Onwards, therefore, into the extended extemporisations that form “Take a Look At God’s Face” by Sulk Rooms.
Sulk Rooms – also known as Thomas Ragsdale – has used all that is technology to synthesise these soundscapes and package them into musical boxes that, I would presume, encapsulate the mood for a scene in the aforementioned short film. Much of this music did seem low key and distinctly ambient in style yet there was something unsettling underpinning everything as if there were unpleasant undertones just waiting to be unleashed. Curiosity duly led me to seek out the source short film and said film turned out to be something rather more interesting than I was expecting and was, in fact, a rather twisted tale that had been disguised as a modern day fable. Only with alpacas. Everybody likes alpacas.
Yet, even with the film fresh in my mind, the connection between music and picture seemed less than obvious until it occurred to me that I had simply not noticed the music while watching the film. The music had lurked in the background with malevolent intent for the whole of the running time doing just what it had been designed to do. Context is everything and job duly done, as they say.
The album is available on vinyl and from the usual digital places.