With the recent sad news that George A. Romero has passed away, Modern Robot’s original take on his zombie classic at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe is a chance to celebrate his iconic legacy. ALIVE: Music for Night of the Living Dead sees edited screenings of Romero’s bleak cult horror movie treated to tense and disturbing live scoring at ZOO Venues this August.
Merging the tradition of silent movies and the aesthetic of contemporary film scoring, Modern Robot’s Ben Singer has created a mesmerising, intense soundtrack to the 1968 Night of the Living Dead, performed live at each screening. Romero’s film, which launched the zombie genre on a shoestring almost 50 years ago, is stark, personal, and resonates politically today. In ALIVE, it offers Edinburgh horror fans an opportunity to rediscover his masterpiece with a visual and audio experience that truly gets under your skin.
Singer says: “This is the first live cinema I’ve done with much of the dialog intact, which means many times, dialog without music. As a musician creating a musical experience, it’s not comfortable to trust silence, but my intent here is to treat the music as a film score, judging it as film editor and viewer.”
He adds: “For fringe performances I knew I’d need to cut the film down significantly as well, and this worried me a little at first. But when I began editing, I found that inside this B-movie classic is a somewhat shorter film that is tight, powerful, and sharp-edged.”
ALIVE: Music for Night of the Living Dead will be on at The Sanctuary, ZOO Venues (117 Nicolson St, Edinburgh EH8 9ER), 4-28 August (not 16th) at 10pm. Tickets from £7 available at edfringe.com.
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