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Cinemetal Reviews

OPETH, BLACK SABBATH, AND ENSLAVED GET MELLO…YOU SHOULD TOO

 Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 2:30pm by

I recently contacted Bazillion Points book publisher and heavy metal author Ian Christe about reviewing his books for MetalSucks. Bazillion Points is best known as the home of Daniel Ekeroth’s excellent tome, Swedish Death Metal.

Ian was kind enough to send me a hardcover of Hanoi Rocks guitarist Andy McCoy’s autobiography Sheriff McCoy. I was not able to start on that book as I was neck-deep into Slash’s autobiography. Luckily for me, Ian also enclosed a DVD of a feature-length documentary, Mellodrama.

During one of my reading breaks I decided to pop in this film and am I glad I did. Mellodrama is easily one of the most entertaining, informative, and educational music documentaries I have seen in ages. It even has a little something for you metalheads, prog rock types, and horror film score fans in MetalSuckistan.

I knew absolutely nothing about the musical instrument known as the Mellotron going into this film. What I came to learn is that it was the first keyboard to emulate other musical instruments via the usage of magnetic tapes. In plain English, the Mellotron was the first sampler. Well, I should say that the Mellotron was actually a rip-off of another instrument, so, in essence, a sampling of a sampler.

It was (and is) also an instrument used by various rock/metal types including Opeth, Enslaved, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin; as well as Italian film composers including Goblin and Fabio Frizzi, for such classic horror flicks as Suspiria, Zombie, and The Gates of Hell.

Director Dianna Dilworth traces the origins of the Mellotron back to the 1950s as the invention of American Harry Chamberlin, whose ultra-heavy tape-driven keyboard was titled, imaginatively, the Chamberlin.

The story of how Harry’s invention was basically stolen from directly underneath his nose is fascinating in its own right. His chief salesman ran off with two of the instruments and sold them to a company in England as his own idea. The British version, known as the Mellotron, soon became a favorite amongst musicians with bands such as the Moody Blues, Yes, and the aforementioned Led Zeppelin. The intro to The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever””probably best exemplified the unique sounds created by the Mellotron.

Dilworth expertly chronicles the deception in the creation of the Mellotron, the rise of the instrument among some of the world’s most famous recording stars, as well as its inevitable decline. She also does a brilliant job of laying out how Harry Chamberlin became the original Godfather of sampling, the evolution of sampling from the Chamberlin to today’s reliance on synthesizers, to the retro-fascination with the Mellotron by many of today’s musicians including Michael Penn, Kanye West, and Radiohead.

It’s not often I learn something new about music or musical instruments these days. Mellodrama, however, introduced me to an entire world I had no idea existed. From the fascinating instrument to the current culture of worship that surrounds it to the exposure and creation of sampling, Mellodrama opened my eyes on several fronts.

While not an obvious entry into the heavy metal documentary realm, Mellodrama jumps to the front of the pack as the best so far for 2010. Plain and simple, if you are fascinated by music — any genre of music — then you will appreciate this film. It is well-made, informative, entertaining, and gave me something new to chew on and add to my musical lexicon.

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(4 1/2 out of 5 horns)

-CM

Corey Mitchell is a best-selling author of true crime books and founder of In Cold Blog. Join him on Facebook and Twitter. His next book, SAVAGE SON, can be pre-ordered now.

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  • Benito

    only one question, where can I buy it?

  • Discipleofthewatch

    MetalSuckistan! I love it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Pickens/58502702 Paul Pickens

    the stormtrooper helmet at 1:54 is fucking awesome.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Corey-Mitchell/660352330 Corey Mitchell

      That cracked me up, too! It’s shows up even more in the movie.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Devon-Czekaj/550092101 Devon Czekaj

    I love mellotrons, I’ve been meaning to buy this.

    • battleid

      Metal + Mellotron = New Purchase for Me.

      Needs more doublebass? nay! needs more Mellotron.

  • Glenn

    I don’t agree that the Mellotron “invented” sampling as it’s understood through rap and electronic dance music. The sounds being reproduced by the Mellotron are not significant in and of themselves the way rap producers sample specific song snippets or beats that have specific cultural resonances and then manipulate those snippets to comment on or recontextualize those resonances. The string sound being played back on a Mellotron is not culturally specific enough to be have resonances of its own beyond its mere existence. For its first practitioners, the Mellotron was a technological means to a very simple end: you can’t have a string orchestra on stage with you at the club so you buy a Mellotron.

    However, with contemporary groups like Opeth, the *sound* of the Mellotron’s recorded strings is itself culturally resonant, and their use of the Mellotron is a tool to give those songs a distinct historical, or creaky, patina. This isn’t to say that Opeth is “sampling” the Mellotron since they’re interested in it in its most historically pure state, not for how they can manipulate it for aesthetic reasons.

    • http://www.bazillionpoints.com Ian Christe

      Actually, in the film Michael Penn makes the case the Harry Chamberlin not only invented sampling, but also sequencing, because his early keyboards employed not just recorded sounds, but also complete sections of rhythmic accompaniment which could be chopped up and used to create new songs—which is where the magic happened in electronic music 40 years later.

      Just throwing that out there…

      • Glenn

        Not having seen the film yet, I’m curious to see what Penn’s argument is. However, it seems pretty fundamental to the cultural workings of the thing called “sampling” that it contain some amount of cultural specificity, that the sounds being manipulated are not generic. In my opinion, it’s hard to argue that aspect was in much force by either the inventor of the Mellotron or its earliest users. I don’t think they really cared what the sounds “meant” so long as they could be reproduced. However, sampling as cultural practice depends on context for the new sounds to have any meaning.

        Of course, you could load anything you wanted into the Mellotron and in that sense it is certainly an important technological development. At the same time, the film trailer seems to be trying to reclaim the whole of sampling as simply a matter of technological inventiveness created by a nerdy dude interested in making things more convenient for Aunt Mabel. While the history of sampling can encompass both Aunt Mabel and Public Enemy (and certainly hip hop producers have always had an interest in relevant strains of the European avant garde), the film trailer didn’t seem to recognize that complexity.

        Interested to check out the film regardless because it has Opeth in it. haha

  • http://www.prosaicparadise.com/ Kim

    I feel duty-bound to get this DVD. Surprised and delighted to see it reviewed here though!