In 2009 the band, then known as British Sea Power, were commissioned by the Edinburgh Film Festival to create their own soundtrack for the 1934 quasi-documentary, which they premiered by playing along live during a screening at the event.
A studio version of the album followed in May the same year, while more screening/performances took place at the BFI in London and at cinemas in Brighton and Sheffield, while events were also staged on a series of islands, including Jersey, the Hebrides and a Norwegian islet in the Arctic Circle.
Charting the activities of fisherman based on a remote outcrop in mouth of Galway Bay in western Ireland, Robert J Flaherty’ Man Of Aran captured a disappearing way of life as Aran’s inhabitants battled daily against the elements to survive, something that chimed deeply with Sea Power’s own curiosity for the past and their urgent, environmentally-driven concerns for the future.
The resulting, mainly instrumental score, proved to be a true artistic collaboration that stretched across the decades, earning the group widespread acclaim upon its release, both for the music’s simpatico relationship with the original film and as a stand alone work in its own right.
Declared by The Quietus on release as a “perfect symbiosis that should rightly be regarded as something of an understated classic,” Ireland’s Hot Press called it “Stunning... breath-taking” while NME encouraged listeners to “let it all gloriously wash over you.”
Fans will finally be able to experience that artistic and emotional depth on vinyl with this reissue.
TRACK LISTING
A1 - Man Of Aran
A2 - The South Sound
A3 - Come Wander With Me
B1 - Tiger King
B2 - The Currach
B3 - Boy Vertiginous
C1 - Spearing The Sunfish
C2 - Conneely Of The West
C3 - The North Sound
D1 - Woman Of Aran
D2 - It Comes Back Again
D3 - No Man Is An Archipelago
