Kevin Murray

The time is the Cold War. The President and Congress have entered into a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. The charismatic chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff believes that the Soviets will not abide by the treaty and he begins to plan a coup, setting the stage for a suspenseful story.

Award winning composers and musicians John Rae and Ben Wilcock have produced a stunning 14 song collaboration of original material. Joined by the celebrated New Zealand bassist, Patrick Bleakley the album has been described as "beguiling" (PBS, The Modernist) Featuring guest artists Scottish guitarist Kevin Murray, former Black Seeds Irish based saxophonist Jabin Ward and multi instrumentalist Daniel Yeabsley, this is jazz for the 21st Century. Ebbing and flowing between chaos and beauty this album will take the listener to places they never expected. A truly unique take on contemporary jazz. Recorded over two years, with contributions from Scotland, Ireland and different parts of New Zealand, Splendid Isolation takes traditional acoustic forms and bends them in a way only these two highly original composers could.

Sofia Coppola has, with two elegant movies, proved herself a talented director with a keen eye for interior life. She's also got great ears. For Lost in Translation, the story of a May-December friendship in Tokyo between two displaced Americans, the score is a tonic for jetlag. Coppola prescribes a dose of shoegazer pop, from My Bloody Valentine's chiming "Sometimes" to Jesus & Mary Chain's fuzzed-out "Just Like Honey." The music nails the hazy conscious state of actors Bill Murray (as a movie star with a midlife crisis) and Scarlet Johansson (as an emotionally marooned twenty-something). It also provides a safe, warm envelope in which they can enact their overseas adventures. Working with producer Brian Reitzell, whose band Air scored her previous Virgin Suicides, Coppola lured Valentine's Kevin Shields into providing several slices of dreamy indie-rock and sonic wallpaper, as stylish as it is formless. There's a welcome bit of Japanese goofiness, a funhouse-mirror reflection of U.S. folk-rock courtesy of early-1970s band Happy End. And a "hidden" track provides the audio of Murray, in the film, doing his sleepy karaoke version of Roxy Music's "More Than This."

Housed in suitably evocative artwork and a stylish clamshell box design, Separate Paths Together provides a wide-ranging, four-hour overview of the pop stars, the club folkies, the rock band refugees, the stoned poets, the political agitators, the wry humorists and the bedsit bards that came together to make up a vibrant, multifaceted scene.