Sometimes it takes a while between the founding of a band and the first album – but 14 years is almost a record. This is what happened with SQÜRL, the group of indie director Jim Jarmusch. The music on the debut “Silver Haze” is like Jarmusch’s films: slow, meditative, minimalist and powerful.
Jarmusch founded SQÜRL in 2009 because he needed music for his film “The Limits of Control”. Soundtracks for the films “Only Lovers Left Alive” and “Paterson” followed, together with composer and bandmate Carter Logan. In 2017 it was “Gimme Danger” with which Jarmusch brought his love of music to the cinema.
The documentary pays homage to punk musician Iggy Pop and his former band The Stooges. When he was a teenager, the Stooges knocked him out, Jarmusch said at the world premiere. 20 years earlier he had already documented a concert tour by Neil Young and Crazy Horse in “Year of the Horse”. Jarmusch also directed music videos for artists such as Tom Waits and Neil Young.
Opening track “Berlin ’87”
Jarmusch once said he was trying to find his own rhythm with Carter Logan, explaining his band’s profound and creeping sound: “I speak slowly, I love music, so maybe I have a slow rhythm in me? I also like fast stuff, but I don’t create fast stuff myself.”
So now the first album – and with a connection to Germany at that: The tightly interlaced opening track “Berlin ’87” captures Jarmusch’s time in the German capital in a dark and sometimes threatening soundscape without vocals. The video by filmmaker Jem Cohen consists of street shots from Berlin at the turn of the century. Grey in grey. Cold and forbidding. Joyless and depressed. “Jim first created the basic guitar tracks in his home studio with memories of life in Berlin in 1987 around him,” the band said in a statement.
“Silver Haze” – produced by Kendall Dunn – is in its deep tranquility the logical musical counterpart to Jarmusch’s film art, supported by guest appearances by greats such as Charlotte Gainsbourg and Mark Ribot. As a “poetic journey of spoken words” it sometimes seems almost like a museum-like sound installation to close your eyes.
