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NLF3 ¡Que Viva Mexico!
NLF 3 perform a live soundtrack for Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece ¡Que Viva Mexico! (1931).



In 2004, Le Printemps de Septembre French contemporary art festival and the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain (Paris) commissioned the instrumental parisian group NLF 3 to write and perform an accompaniement to Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece ¡Que Viva Mexico! (1931).

¡Que Viva Mexico! is a documentary reconstruction of episodes from Mexican history, from the pre-classical period to the revolution of 1910. It was commissioned by Paramount in the late 1920s, when Eisenstein was living in Hollywood. Soon after filming began, however, the shoot was shut down due to financial difficulties. Forced to return to Russia, Eisenstein left all the rushes behind in America, and did not have access to them again before his death in 1948. The film was finally given its premiere in 1979, thanks to the hard work of Eisenstein's former assistant Gregori Alexandrov, who put together a version of the film respecting the intentions of the great director for "what should have been one of the most beautiful films of all time".

The instrumental group NLF 3 composed their first soundtrack for an experimental silent film screening in 1999, and since then have provided both live and recorded accompaniements for films. The musical environment the group creates aim to reflect the situations and landscapes of the films themselves, and often mixes psychedelic loops, underground rock, Brazilian rhythms and afro-jazz sonorities. Though the two albums that resulted from their sound experiments were highly acclaimed, the trio had not until now been asked to provide a score for a featurelength film. With this commission the nlf3 trio were set the challenge of composing the sountrack for one of the greatest feature films of the pre-war period.

"The NLF3 espouse brevity as an art form, presenting a spangled sequence of continualy shifting miniatures. Detail is a virtue, the trio's personal toyscape infatuated with blips and blops, all things that chime, burble or ping, with pourring analogue textures running across what amounts to a conventional instrumental core. Like a kitch This Heat, they merge grooves and improvisatory trimmings, making a playful exploration of junked instruments, or a least faking such activities with samplers. The mix of live and looped elements spreads and shunts sounds across an extreme stereo field, the tiny details of peripherical chatter often just as interesting as the central chatter. NLF3 has a unique sound of their own, a higly sensitive approach of the very essence of tone, texture and rythm. Few groups are so consistently interesting." THE WIRE

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NLF 3 - ¡Que Viva Mexico! Paris (2005)