KiF Productions’ Still Out is a couple of things. First off, it’s an ambient experiment. A carefully crafted collage, constructed in homage to The KLF’s genre benchmark, Chill Out. Secondly, it’s also the soundtrack to a similarly collaged road movie.* The work of two childhood friends, Will Cookson and Tom Haverly, together with film maker Rufus Exton, the collaboration is a captivating listen and watch. The music and images mirroring and matching one another, as if engaged in a multi-media game of tag. Via “cut-and-paste techniques” and sonic “shifts and tweaks”, the duo plot a course. Documenting the British landscape, from North Yorkshire to North Devon. From Swaledale to Blakeney Straits, from Laugharne Estuary to Welcombe Mouth. Together, composing an audio-visual poem. Unconsciously, tapping into something beyond our ken, casting a spell, not of the always in vogue folk horror, but folk beauty. 

Whistling drones accompany close ups of lichen and fungi. Chimes go with hedgehog spines. Jefferies, Carewe & Greig’s Evil at Play – famously sampled by Aphex Twin for X-Tal – echoes infinitely while the camera circles stone ruins. Heavenly harps score green, rolling fields. Birds sing as spiders spin webs against the backdrop of a blue, summers day.

Sheep are herded, rams stand proud in heather, while poetry is chanted. A car engine starts and we’re speeding down winding country lanes. Night falls, lit by blurred city lights, the cameraman seemingly suffering from white line fever, to the sound of pedal steel lullabies. Trains clack as they pass over points. There’s aboriginal song and some amazing aerial views. The Jodrell Bank radio telescope seems to be important to the pair. They use it in their logo.

New age strings shimmer and segue into cattle bells rattling. Acoustic picking competes with a level crossing sounding its warning, and that transforms into a Tibetan bowl ringing. We see wild horses, a bearded nanny goat, hilltops and horizons. Sunflowers being pollinated. Kaleidoscope effects. Radio dials get twisted. Elvis gives us a burst of Blue Moon, which dissolves into loons. There’s a familiar, rave-friendly snippet of Cheb Sahraoui.

Fresh water streams sync with forests and lens flare. Traditional woodwinds and noisy motorboats merge with Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. Campfires and estuaries flicker and flow to contrabass-led jazz. Smoky sax. Sonar blips. Flocks fly in formation to syncopated soft rock. Surf gives way to morning mists, church choirs, a frog chorus. Wise words from gurus confirm that this is indeed a trip. 

Some sources are fleeting. Others stick around. Trees are mutated by post-production trickery. Moss covers everything. Bells toll. Winds howl. Muezzins mix with flutes. Roads run in reverse. Day turns to night. Owls hoot. Flames crackle. Night turns to day. Sunrise is a far away orange glow. Peaceful piano joins a resonant buzz, and pebbles on a beach, stones on a shoreline, cliffs, coves, causeways, until, in the end, all that remains are the tides. Waves, waves and more waves. 

KiF productions’ Still Out can be ordered directly from Sound Records.

You can find out more about future screenings at the KiF Productions website.