ABSTRACT
There have been a few isolated instances of the phenomenon of the “New Silents” bleeding across into sound films. While for years film scoring courses had used quiet films like Fritz Lang's M (1930) for students to add music, more and recent prominent “refurbishment” was evident in Philip Glass's music added to the Hollywood Dracula (1931/1999), starring Bela Lugosi. A more extreme version of this “remixing” process was the rock band British Sea Power's new music and complete “masking” of the soundtrack for Robert Flaherty's celebrated documentary Man of Aran (1934) in 2009. The film is reconfigured as a new object, cut to the band's measure, as they redirect its cachet and sense of artistry.
