TATE MODERN
This is the eighth in a series of original music tracks written about artworks at Tate Modern.
Tate invited The Long Blondes to walk around the gallery and find a work of art that would inspire them to write a track.
In the end, it was Jannis Kounellis’s Untitled that grabbed their attention. They said "Untitled caught our eye because we saw the stark industrial landscape and pictured ourselves within it." This is the result.
You can listen to it in the gallery or here online.
The Long Blondes want to be as good as Abba and there is no irony there; they want to be as good at writing hit songs. The first kindred spirit to notice the Long Blondes was hip south London independent label Angular Records. Through them, the band released a string of 45s; The Hitchcock-inspired Appropriation (By Any Other Name) and cult classic Giddy Stratospheres. Both have become indie dancefloor staples ever since, as has most recent release Separated By Motorways, recorded by producer Paul Epworth (Futureheads, Bloc Party) at his request.
In December 2005, the band were asked to support Franz Ferdinand at Alexandra Palace and have performed in Stockholm, Barcelona and New York. They kicked off 2006 as recipients of the NME Philip Hall Radar Award (previously won by Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs) as everyone from the Guardian to Vogue proclaimed the Long Blondes to be the best unsigned band in the country.
The Long Blondes opened this summer’s NME New Music Tour and have also played dates in Mexico, USA, Spain and Ibiza as well as playing the Leeds and Reading Weekend. The band have also been asked to play at the opening ceremony of the British Design Council Biennale in Venice.
Kounellis creates a highly-charged atmosphere, using architecture to establish a theatrical setting within which he deploys objects with strong metaphorical connections.
On two adjacent walls, the work shows an urban and industrial landscape with houses and smoking factory chimney, simply drawn in sharp perspective, in charcoal outline with the aid of a template. The drawing extends across the right angle separating the two walls.
Above the drawn roof tops but below the cloud of smoke, two large stuffed birds (a jackdaw and a hooded crow) are impaled on arrows, which pin them to the wall; the attitudes of the birds suggest that they have just been shot and are about to fall to earth. At a right angle to the townscape, five drawings on paper are pinned to the wall in a vertical column. These carry simple images in outline of women's heads and landscapes which have been drawn by engraving lines with a sharp-ended instrument into the thick layers of black carbonised material.
You can view this work in the Tate Collection.
You can learn more about Jannis Kounellis in the Tate Collection.
