Various Artists – Moonlight Sounds

Moonlight Sounds – Various Artists

by Aidan Roberts

Every year, the Moonlight Cinema Festival brings thousands of people to the parks and waterfronts of our fair capital cities, boasting a well-chosen roster of mainstream, world, indie and lost classics of the cinema. So here we’ve got a rather big compilation of music to accompany the festival, which is initially an exciting prospect – but the programming is very inconsistent. Mostly assembled from bands and artists who have performed before and after the outdoor screenings, this double disc racks up tracks from local indie faves like The Paper Scissors, Will Styles, Uncle Ho and Blue King Brown. In effect, this is a good way of assembling a bit of a hit parade of FBI and Triple J favourites, but the prevalence of dance tracks, big beat and mega-hype stuff like Give In (Quazimodo Sound Consortium), Somewhere Somehow (Good Buddha) and We Are The Music (Grafton Primary), takes away from the cinematic celebrations of the festival itself. Perhaps if they had licensed some Morricone tracks or more experimental stuff to break up the beats, this would seem like a more rounded companion to Moonlight Cinema.

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