Live Score Weekender 2025
DEATH AND VANILLA (LIVE SCORE):
WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU (1968)
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Su 12 Oct 2025 19:30
Tickets: £12
Book tickets: hdfst.uk/E133039
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Swedish baroque/psychedelic pop trio Death And Vanilla, sonic archaeologists with a hauntological bent, conceive a foreboding live soundtrack to 'Whistle And I'll Come To You', the stark '60s televisual adaptation of MR James's eerie ghost story of a man alone by the sea, haunted, pursued by something malevolent. A story thick with creeping unease, uncoiling dread, and awful revelation.
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'Recalling the eerie, haunted ambience of Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise's Twin Peaks soundtrack, Stereolab/Broadcast's experimental vision of '50s lounge muzak/exotica and French '60s pop, or the narcotic country-noir of Mazzy Star.'
The Guardian
Death And Vanilla follow their much-praised re-imagined soundtracks to 'Vampyr' (2017) and 'The Tenant' (2018) with their interpretation of the soundtrack to cult 1968 TV programme 'Whistle And I'll Come To You', at a time when post-ambient electronica and bedevilled folk music are co-habiting, and the public's interest in rites and rituals has been sparked by a new generation of fans. The bizarre storyline of 'Whistle And I'll Come To You', a horror story about self-deception, seems even more pertinent... and strangely haunting.
Brilliantly filmed in 1968 by Jonathan Miller, this utterly terrifying dramatisation of a quintessential MR James short ghost story was originally part of BBC's 'Omnibus' documentary series. Set in a remote coastal village on the English east coast, in a landscape of shingle beaches, windswept sand dunes and old churchyards, it features Michael Horden as a callow and intellectually arrogant academic who unearths an artefact (a bone whistle) in an overgrown Knights Templar cemetery and unwittingly unleashes an ancient, unknowable force. A folkloric tale in the style of 'The Wicker Man', this masterpiece of understated and chillingly effective storytelling defined the traditional ghost story at Christmas.
'A masterpiece of economical horror that remains every bit as chilling as the day it was first broadcast.'
Mark Duguid, British Film Institute
The esoteric live score utilises stuttering tape loops, primitive John Carpenter-like drum machines, and swirling wind and otherworldly choral effects to capture the unsettling atmosphere and amplify the feeling of some supernatural presence.
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Formed in Malmö, Sweden, Death And Vanilla are exponents of dreamily lovely late-'60s-style baroque/psychedelic harmony pop, put through a '90s dream pop filter. Using a panoply of vintage musical equipment - vibraphone, organs, Mellotrons, tremolo guitars, harpsichords and Moogs - alongside whispered vocals, they emulate the sounds of '60s/'70s sci-fi soundtracks, The Radiophonic Workshop, the retro-futuristic electronica of Broadcast, library music, German Krautrock, French Ye-ye pop and '60s psych. They are increasingly known for their dark and ethereal live scores. This, after all, is a band who used to rehearse above a cemetery in Malmo to play live on Hallowe'en at the Fantastisk Filmfestival, Lunds Stadsteater.
'Lush and enveloping, reminiscent of Curt Boettcher and Margo Guryan.'
The Wire
{ Presented in association with 'CUBE Of Wyrding'. }
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