The inaugural London Soundtrack Festival brought concerts, screenings and talks celebrating music for film, television and games. The Lawn’s arts delegation returned convinced that London itself suffers from a dangerous shortage of background music.
London Soundtrack Festival expands into real life
A pilot orchestra has been installed beside a South Bank coffee queue. Gentle woodwind accompanies customers reading the menu. Low strings begin when they see the price. A full brass section erupts whenever a contactless payment is declined, allowing everyone nearby to understand that a 47 year old man has failed the final test of his character.
Felicity Underscore, Minister for Incidental Trumpets, said: “People deserve to know what emotion they are having. Without professional musicians, a commuter may enter a lift completely unaware that the doors are closing with enormous narrative significance. That is how civilisation ends. Quietly, between floors two and three.”
Specialist composers have already scored several neglected public experiences. Finding a seat on the train receives heroic horns. Opening a council tax letter uses one sustained note played by a bassoonist who has seen things. The self checkout saying UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA now comes with the shriek normally reserved for a killer appearing behind the shower curtain, followed by a small violin apologising for the Tesco Extra.
Residents may opt out, although the application process is accompanied by twelve minutes of anxious pizzicato and a percussionist following them home. Organisers insist this is not intimidation. It is immersive audience development, which is intimidation after it has been to university.
The scheme’s triumph came when a man successfully bought a flat white. As he lifted the cup, eighty musicians performed a soaring finale, six screens displayed his childhood memories and a choir assured him that his parking had expired. He described the experience as “a bit much”, before immediately paying £4.80 for hot milk and being given a standing ovation.
Read the real story: the London Soundtrack Festival announcement.
