Music: Cat’s Eyes Duke of Burgundy

Building a soundtrack in the Brighton Festival

Arecent feature of the Brighton Festival has been the live soundtracking of films, and a highlight of this year’s festival will be the first ever live soundtrack of Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy, by Cat’s Eyes, a duo made up of The Horrors frontman Faris Badwan and Italian-Canadian singer and composer Rachel Zeffira.

“The Director contacted us after hearing our first album,” says Faris. “He didn’t have funding for the project at the time, but he wanted to meet up. I’d seen Katalin Varga (Strickland’s debut feature) and I was really in to it, and he was someone I really respected.
“There is no other film like it,” says Rachel. “I have watched it, and I am not exaggerating, hundreds of times, so that I understood the atmosphere and what’s needed, and where a chord change should go… I liked it more every time. Visually, it’s really stunning, but more than that it has a really profound story there. It’s not a lesbian S&M film, it’s about relationships in a world without men. Very emotional.”

The musical backgrounds of Faris and Rachel couldn’t be much different. “Before I met Faris there were whole areas of music I had never come across. Embarrassing things. I grew up in a small town where they listened to heavy metal and country music.”
When they met, Faris was (and still is) making music with indie-rockers The Horrors, while Rachel was immersed in the world of classical and opera as a singer and oboist. Their first, self-titled, album was influenced by 60s girl groups and the likes of Joe Meek and Phil Spector, and using Zeffira’s contacts in the classical world, they set about performing it live. The Duke of Burgundy soundtrack is an extension of that debt, albeit lusher and more cinematic in quality, but still featuring plenty of orchestration. “There are a lot of classical arrangements, which Rachel takes care of,” says Faris. “The show itself will be as close as possible to the actual recording,” says Rachel, including a small orchestra and choir. “Faris will be concentrating on the more experimental sounds you can hear on the soundtrack. This is the first time we have done it. I haven’t been to that concert hall (Brighton Dome’s Concert Hall), it looks really beautiful.”
Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, 22 May, 8pm, £10-£18.50, 01273 709709, brightondome.org