Alloy Orchestra - Live Performance Review

Alloy Orchestra playing their original score live, for Alfred Hitchcock's non-talkie * "Blackmail" (1929). This event took place at the Mass MoCA gallery in October 2006.

The enormous galleries here have some eye-popping stuff lurking in almost every room (especially artist Huang Yong Ping's giant, suspended, serpent skeleton). There's plenty to feast on including a great Pixilated Lo-Fi computer animation by Paul Chan, that had my girlfriend Fifi and I hypnotized for nearly half an hour. At an eight dollar admission (student rate, regular adult is $10), it's quite a bang for your buck too, if it's even possible to refer to a museum in that colloquial context. If you live anywhere between Boston and New York it's worth the trip.

Alloy Orchestra's score to Blackmail was intelligent, humorous and most importantly, for Hitch's sake, gripping. The Alloy Orchestra playing it live on stage with Blackmail behind them on the big screen was special to say the least. This collaboration fit nicely together with Alloy Orchestra’s creativity exercised via using the film as its canvas. If you are able to find Blackmail it’s absolutely worth viewing. This silent film (there was a sound version by Hitchcock as well) demonstrates Hitchcock’s mastery at propelling narrative via “showing” as opposed to “telling” which we unfortunately get entirely too much of these days in movies. If you ever get a chance to see the Alloy Orchestra live (and they play all around the country) by all means enjoy the experience at least once. Some trivia regarding The Alloy Orchestra… One of its members, Roger Miller, is the guitarist in the most underrated band in the past 30 years (That’s just this reporter’s opinion), Mission of Burma. Less important, apparently they are Roger Ebert’s contemporary favorites for composing and performing silent film scores.

* Hitchcock shot two versions of this film, a sound and a silent one.