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Dead Rat Orchestra
A Hint - Music For Gaugin's Letters

Album UK 2012 on Critical Heights label
Rock and Soundtrack (Post Rock)

In 2010 we were asked to contribute music for a film to accompany a major retrospective of the work of Paul Gauguin. We worked to a shifting tapestry of images of his paintings and the places in which they were created. The film was reflective of an attempt to understand and contextualize the thinking of the man, focusing on a handful of Gauguin's letters to friends and family, gradually charting his progression away from the 'civilized' society from which he came... "I am living in silent contemplation of nature, devoting myself entirely to my art. Without that, there is no salvation; and it is the best means of keeping physical pain at bay. In that way, I acquire the strength to live without too much bitterness towards my fellows." "I like Brittany, I find a certain wildness and primitiveness here. When my clogs resound on this granite soil I hear the dull, matt, powerful tone I'm looking for in my painting." "A hint; don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction - study nature, then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result." "in art, truth is what a person feels in the state of mind he happens to be in.." "Be an Impressionist to the bitter end, and be afraid of nothing." "My mind is made up - soon I shall go to Tahiti, a small island in Oceania, where material life can be lived without money. There I want to forget all the bad things of the past, and die unbeknownst to people here, free to paint without any concern for glory. I judge that my art is only a seedling thus far, and out there I hope to cultivate it for my own pleasure, in it's primitive and savage state... here Gauguin is finished, and nothing more will be seen of him. I will not think of death - but on the contrary, I shall dream of eternal life." Gauguin (1848 - 1903)

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