8. Michael NymanA Zed & Two Noughts
A Zed & Two Noughts is a film by Peter Greenaway, it’s one of my favourite films of his, and it’s almost a baroque version of JG Ballard’s Crash. There was a period of about three years where Michael Nyman and Peter Greenaway collaborated – Nyman did all the scores to Greenaway’s films – and during that period A Zed & Two Noughts was released.
When I first discovered it, I used to listen to it every day on the way to work and the way home from work, for about five years; I was obsessed with it. I love the films and music that came out of that collaborative period, and it’s a beautiful album. It is baroque, English minimalism, with a lot of phrases stolen from Henry Purcell, and it’s the same thing with Ape Of Naples, where it has this pathos and fragility to it, mixed with humour.
My favourite track, ‘L’Escargot’, plays into the ongoing motif of the film much faster with this woman’s voice that is so high but beautiful. It’s almost like Purcell scoring The Benny Hill Show – there is this farcical humour that undercuts the seriousness. It’s not gone too far up its own arse.
