The Olivia Tremor Control
Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle

THE REVIEW

I'm here with a makeshift microphone.

I've taken the wrong path once again.

I was calmly heading home, country road, at dusk.

Suddenly, I got distracted, a sign caught my attention, I missed the exit I was supposed to take.

I try to go back by taking the service road

I shouldn't have done it, I can't find my way anymore.

I stop the car near what in the middle of a clearing looks like a farmhouse, actually no, it's indeed a castle.

It seems uninhabited, I enter through the first door I find, there's no one inside, but I hear music.

On the walls, images of 60s/70s bands, especially the Beatles, actually no, almost exclusively the Beatles.

Suddenly appears in front of me someone with the face of John Lennon dressed as a walrus, actually, no, it's indeed John Lennon, with a somewhat sad face, he seems like a ghost, he doesn't say a word.

Meanwhile, the images on the walls keep playing something that strongly resembles their pieces from the last period, that's where the music is coming from.

There's also Paul McCartney, surrounded a bit like on the cover of Sergeant Pepper by various singers and bands from those years, I recognize him.

I find him in front of me too, he looks very aged, he puts a hand on my shoulder and invites me to take a tour in the castle.

A little apart, I also see Ringo Starr.

I sense the presence of George Harrison, but I don't see him.

I start my tour of the castle.

Including the first one that serves as an entrance, I count, in the end, twenty-seven rooms, attached to one another seamlessly, like in a Borges story or an Escher painting.

In each of them, characters with the faces of late-sixties Beatles painted on the walls keep playing surrounded by the enthusiasm of the people.

The music in the first rooms is extremely lively, captivating, it immediately gets into your head.

In every room I cross, I stand in the center and record what I hear with my makeshift microphone.

In almost all of them there's a strong smell of psychedelic sounds and colors.

The nineteenth is the strangest of all, there’s practically no music, it's overlooking a busy road, there's a dripping faucet, or something like that, cars passing by with the roar of their engines.

After about ten minutes, I gather courage and decide to proceed further.

The music in the last rooms becomes more rarefied, reflective, interspersed with sporadic moments of regained liveliness.

Always chaotically melodic.

Sometimes the rooms are really tiny and the music almost nonexistent, completely elusive.

After visiting the twenty-seventh, one of the more normal ones, when it’s already evening, I go down the stairs to the ground floor, I no longer hear music coming from the rooms.

I get curious, go back up, revisit the rooms.

There's no one playing on the walls anymore, the instruments are on the ground, the audience has disappeared, the Beatles on the walls are now down to two, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, much aged.

Arriving at the ground floor, I notice four familiar characters.

They ask me if I've ever listened to "Dusk at The Cubist Castle" by the Olivia Tremor Control, they point to the tape I carry with me.

Young and smiling, they accompany me to the door, wishing me good night posed like on the cover of the white album..., singing all in chorus their last song to me.

… And good night to you as well, since I'm at it, from me.