Alex Riggen and Nick Pompou will perform their first public show as Murnau on Saturday at East Moline's Mixtapes, but the duo's ambitions are already clear.
Based in Morrison, Illinois, the band is named for the expressionist silent-film director F.W. Murnau (who made Nosferatu and Sunrise), and in addition to a trio of demos it has already recorded a score for the 1929 surrealistic classic short Un Chien Andalou as part of an EP with the single "We March on." The songs for a full-length have been written, the drums are recorded, and the album should be released next year, Riggen said last week.
"We've just always focused on recording and releasing ... to a wide audience [on the Web] rather than finding shows," he said. "We just like to write."
The band's sound certainly doesn't hail from the silent era: a deliberate, lo-fi, minimalist style of post-metal that should appeal to fans of Tool, Neurosis, Pelican, and Red Sparowes.
Guitarist/vocalist Riggen and drummer Pompou - both in their early 20s - have played in bands together since 2001 (including in the Cure/Smashing Pumpkins-influenced Far from Words, which played several shows in the Quad Cities), and they formed Murnau in 2006.
Like those old movies, Murnau is at times monochromatic, but in a good way. The limited instrumental and production palette and the flat sound of detuned guitars force the band to be creative with structure and arrangement, and while the riffs are funereal in tone and tempo, the band still loads its tracks with hooks.
The vocals are largely superfluous, and they seem particularly out-of-place on Un Chien Andalou, with a disconnect between the endlessly cryptic film and lyrics such as "Do you hear me? / Inseparable / We've heard this before." They're appropriately vague, but words do nothing to illuminate these images.
Yet it's canny musically, with noise spilling out from the soundtrack as a razor slices an eye open in the movie's repulsively iconic moment.
"I'm hoping that it stands alone on its own," Riggen said of the four-track project. "I see the movie playing as I play, so I can't separate the two."
The three songs on the band's demo CD each run more than eight minutes, while "We March on" clocks in at under four, with the words and vocals better integrated and taking a more prominent role. It's not a pop song by any means, but the band's eight released tracks suggest both versatility and vision.
Riggen cited Werner Herzog's documentary Fata Morgana, in which desert images are contrasted with Leonard Cohen songs, as one influence. That certainly seems an appropriate comparison for Murnau's soundtrack work, with 21st Century music commenting on a long-dead filmmaking style.
"You can almost change how the viewer is interpreting the movie by what the music is," Riggen said.
And Murnau hopes to soon tackle the inspiration for its name. Riggen said the group is considering scoring Sunrise - widely considered one of the greatest movies of all time - although he's concerned that it will be difficult to write lyrics for narrative film. "I wouldn't want to just describe what the movie's doing on-screen," he said.
Murnau will perform at Mixtapes (830 15th Avenue in East Moline) on Saturday, October 4, with Acubake System, The Post Mortems, and Somewhere Conscious. The show starts at 7 p.m., and cover is $5.
For more information on Murnau, visit MurnauMusic.com.
