Red Mole was a countercultural experimental theatre troupe founded in 1970s Aotearoa. They enjoyed success at home, as well as on the international stage, making their way to New York to start their own theatre and tour the world. 
Red Mole: A Romance is a documentary from award-winning filmmaker Annie Goldson (Punitive Damage; Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web; A Mild Touch of Cancer). The film covers the story of Red Mole in its prime, as well as their continued influence today. Archival material, both visual and audio, is used to tell a personal and affecting story.
The archival material is connected and interwoven into my original score for the film. The film proposed a unique challenge of combining new original score with archives in a way that was seamless within the narrative, whilst also making it clear what music is original Red Mole recordings, and what is my own.
My original score features heavily and is used at many key moments, which helps tie the overall film into one feature-length narrative, instead of a series of archived performances.
This also involved a lot of audio restoration work, as many of those archived materials had many quality issues that needed attention. The approach taken was very different from music restoration work I have done previously. Extraneous noise and distortion are generally seen as unwanted blemishes that should be removed, but they also are representative of the time and history of the archive, and so removing them entirely does a disservice to the material. This leads to a balancing act of deciding what is benefitting the recording, and what is detracting from it. Removing all impurities can leave the recording feeling eerily clean and lifeless, but doing too little leaves distractions which pull the audience away from the tremendous talent of the Red Mole members.
I also had the pleasure of mixing the film, utilising facilities at Department of Post (who are great).

Red Mole: A Romance debuts at the New Zealand International Film Festival nationwide in 2023.
For more info: https://www.nziff.co.nz/2023/tamaki-makaurau-auckland/red-mole-a-romance/

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see below for more content — including the video for "In Signs of All", an original song by Lauren Collins and myself featured in the film.