Although much is said about Mark Jenkin’s use of old Bolex 16mm cameras, the film from which he processes by hand, a similarly DIY approach to sound and music have arguably played as significant a role in creating the both tough and uncanny interpretation of Cornwall in which his films are set. The magnificent Rose Of Nevada, released this month, combines the social themes of the local fishing industry’s decline explored in Bait with the eeriness of second film Enys Men, as a boat appears to be dragged back in time to the early 1990s. The unease of the trapped crew member Nick is conveyed through relentless, clock-like knocking in the sound palette, while his fate is underlined by subtle musical reference points to convey the date, from New Fast Automatic Daffodils on a pub jukebox, an extra (actually Jenkin’s stepson) crossing the road in a Stone Roses t-shirt, and ancient cassettes from the filmmaker’s own collection in the character’s bedroom. From film music to making connections through his record collection, Jenkin discusses the musical inspirations that have shaped how he scores and builds the soundworlds in his work.
(And for Subscriber Plus tier members only, at the foot of the feature, there’s a handy 20 track playlist. Not a subscriber yet? You can become one here)
I like there to not be a difference between my music and my sound design, which is why the first track on this list is Simon Fisher Turner’s score for The Garden. It’s just the most incredible sonic collage, and that’s the high bar that I’m aiming for – to create something as visceral and as visual as Simon’s score. I first met him at a screening and I said ‘oh I’ve got your score, I found it I got it for 99p at Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus’. I thought why did I say that? It’s like saying ‘I found it in a bin’. I’ve still got that tape. I went on Radio 4 when Bait came out to talk about The Garden, and I took it with me. I didn’t show anybody, but it was in my pocket the whole time – a little totem.
I first saw The Garden when I was on the dole. We used to go to the pub and put beer mats down the pool table pockets so we could play all day. We’d each order half a pint and stay all afternoon. One evening after the pub, there was a Channel 4 season about Derek Jarman. The continuity announcer said ‘the next film by artist Derek Jarman was shot on Super 8 in his garden’. I thought ‘that sounds rubbish’, because I was imagining our garden – a tiny little backyard. I’d never heard of Dungeness. As soon as it started I thought ‘this is important’, put a video in and recorded it. I’ve still got the video. Some of The Garden is really unsettling but in a way that is addictive. It’s like the first time going to see West Ham or my local team Plymouth Argyle with my dad when I was little in the 80s, I was absolutely terrified and wanted it to be over but then at the end I was going ‘I cannot wait to come back’.
The soundtrack became something I used to listen to all the time. I used to put it on at parties, because some of it’s really euphoric. I always think of the Dungeness nuclear power station – it’s like you’ve travelled to the centre of the earth, ‘oh this is where power starts’ and it goes across this desert and then it disperses all around the south. Nuclear is a word that I’m really fascinated by. I discovered Suede and Jarman at the same time. My sister is four years older than me, she was a massive Smiths fan so I knew about and loved them, but I hadn’t discovered them myself. Suede came along when I was at sixth form college, and then I realised they were all linked, it was like this triangle of The Smiths and Jarman with his music videos, and Suede. There’s that amazing line Jarman has, “the cum-splattered nuclear breeders,” and that links to “the nuclear sky” in Suede. I didn’t know what any of that meant, but it set off images in my head that were a million miles away from where I was in coastal Cornwall. I remember watching an interview with Brett Anderson where he’s got his hair long, he’s not looking at the camera, he’s so uncomfortable he wants to crawl out of his own skin. He’s talking about growing up in Haywards Heath, feeling like he didn’t belong where he was, and wanting to get to London. I have a lot of that – the paradox of wanting to either be in the middle of everything, or in the middle of nowhere.
I made this list on the way across America. There are threads that run through it – I always think Kerouac is linked to John Betjeman, and then Tom Waits’ ‘Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night’ links to On The Road– I always feel that’s a Kerouac song, trying to find where the heart of America was. But Kerouac takes me back to Cornwall, because at the end of his life he researched his lineage from his French Massachusetts roots. He always thought that the family originated from Brittany, and then he traced it back and realised that he was Cornish. There’s also a real Performance thread running through it as well as it’s one of my favourite films: a Big Audio Dynamite track about Nick Roeg, and Mick Jagger, the track that everybody thinks is the Stones.
There are direct influences like Simon Fisher Turner and Andrew Kötting and Jem Finer and what they do, but a lot of the references are anything that is just totally uncompromising, and the simpler the better in a lot of ways. The Ride track is like a movie and it always feels like sunbaked Cornwall to me, even though they’re probably singing about landlocked Oxfordshire. Some of them are things from movies – ‘Ohm Sweet Ohm’ is from Radio On. Eno is massive influence on me. Every time I play my tape loop and synthesiser I’m basically trying to recreate Discreet Music and luckily I’m not talented enough to do it. King Tubby: because I love dub, especially where they start with the mechanics of recording before anything. I hide behind the fact that I’ve never claimed to be a musician but I like playing with tape loops. I fell into making music because Gwenno suggested a particular synthesiser, but also because I just love tape in the same way I love film – much more mechanical.
I’m not sure I could ever see someone else doing the sound or music for my films as I enjoy the control. I would like some collaborators… see, I can’t say ‘collaborators’ without feeling like that would be giving up some kind of control. I wouldn’t bring somebody in and go ‘let’s just see what happens’ because I don’t want to see what happens – I know what happens! I just want to make it happen.
Rose of Nevada is released in cinemas on 24 April and on BFI Blu-ray and BFI Player this summer. Mark Jenkin’s soundtrack will be released on Invada and can be pre-ordered here.
The full tracklist for his Quietus Guest Playlist is below, and available on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer and Qobuz by clicking the ‘Subscriber Plus Exclusive Playlist’ button at the start of this article. On streaming services, one or two tracks may be unavailable depending on your chosen platform.
John and Vangelis – ‘The Friends Of Mr Cairo’
William Basinski – ‘The Disintegration Loops’
Mick Jagger – ‘Memo From Turner’
Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen – ‘October In The Railroad Earth’
