Next Saturday, July 19, as part of Plastic Crimewave’s festival Gorilla Sound Explosion, there’ll be a free screening of Mirage Men, the excellent film about the US Air Force and Intelligence services’ manipulation of beliefs about UFOs made by tQ contributor and Strange Attractor Press owner Mark Pilkington, John Lundberg, Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou. Alongside music from Cyclobe, the film’s soundtrack featured Urthona, guitarist Neil Mortimer, who, backed by Mark on synths and Michael J. York on pipes, will be playing a live set ahead of the film. The film-makers have now kindly given us a clip from the DVD’s special edition, drawing on some of the shots of the US southwest they captured while filming, brought together with Mortimer’s music. Take a look at the appetite-whetter above, read Mark filling us in on the background of the video below and reserve tickets for the event – which will be preceded by Mark performing a set with Grumbling Fur’s Alexander Tucker on Thursday, July 17 – at the Facebook event.
"Music was always central to what we wanted to do with Mirage Men. All of the team are keen listeners, while Kypros Kyprianou – who created the film’s potent audio mix – and myself are also regular music makers. Cyclobe’s cosmic unease perfectly suited the paranoid inner space that forms the central axis of the film, but we wanted something very different to reflect the majestic southwestern landscapes that are so integral to the strange story we wanted to tell.
"West Country guitar legend Neil Mortimer, aka Urthona, draws on England’s southwestern landscape for his inspiration. He’s also a huge fan of Neil Young’s score for Dead Man, so we asked him to provide some epic licks for our own film, which he did brilliantly and, like the Crazy Horse himself, in a single session.
"For our special edition DVD, Kypros, Mirage Men‘s co-director and editor, cut 22 minutes of Urthona music to some of the incredible landscape footage we picked up while shooting around New Mexico and Nevada – shake out your boots, don your tinfoil-lined Stetson, and enjoy this excerpt."
