This Friday, the genre-bending Asian Dub Foundation will perform the iconic soundtrack to George Lucas’ THX1138 at the Barbican. Says ADF lead guitarist Steve Savale of the project, "after the success of Battle of Algiers and La Haine I wanted to find a film that’s technically possible to rescore so that audiences can actually watch the film and experience the music live… it was very important to respect the avant-garde, classical, discordant soundtrack that’s there – by one of my great all-time heroes Lalo Schiffrin – where the only melodic instrument is the flute – so Nathan "Flutebox" Lee’s interpretation of those discordant strings is very relevant to the film – it represents the emotion."
On its relevance to today’s audience, Savale says "[The films]’s got religious fundamentalism, mad out of control consumerism and a totalitarian centralised computerised system of domination – I think all of those things exist now." ADF will be touring their THX1138 show throughout October, but before that you can catch them this summer. The Barbican show arrives ahead of ADF’s latest record, More Signal More Noise, due out July 10 courtesy of Believe Recordings.
