Momus and Anne Laplantine – Summerisle

Released on Analog Baroque Records – ANALOG 010 CD – June 2004.

Tracks

  1. Fur Ming Felt Hunt
  2. Black Earth Buzz
  3. Go Fishing Willy
  4. Spin Thread Annie
  5. McKenzie Fling
  6. Fingal Martin’s Mistress
  7. The Tailor Of Dunblane
  8. Manty Kelin
  9. A Spratch O’ Thyme
  10. Trilly Birthphone
  11. Johnny Jump Up
  12. Seakliff Kragg
  13. Ossian May

Momus says

Summerisle was made in collaboration with Anne Laplantine in Berlin. The film ‘The Wicker Man’ stands in relation to ‘Summerisle’ rather as Jacques Tati’s ‘Playtime’ stands in relation to ‘Oskar Tennis Champion‘. The parallel worlds presented in ‘The Wicker Man’ and ‘Playtime’ allowed me to indulge two nostalgias I felt as my albums were crystallising in my mind. ‘Oskar’ was written in the US and Japan in the early 21st century, and ‘Playtime’ allowed me to focus my profound nostalgia for both Europe and the 20th century, since it’s set in an imaginary Paris which incarnates to the point of caricature certain aspects of 20th century Modernism. ‘Summerisle’ indulges a different nostalgia, the yearning of the wandering Scot (now in Berlin) for his homeland. To feel nostalgia or homesickness for the lived past, nostalgia for the formerly existing, or patriotism for a real country, would just be too wretchedly reactionary. I would contest the idea that what we feel is ever ‘nostalgia for the actual’. We inevitably embroider and embellish with such strong emotions as these. A nation, a home, a golden age: these are inevitably fictions, so why not make them far-fetched and utopian fictions instead of limited, fact-smitten ones?

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