Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – The Death Of Bunny Munro (Invada) – Nick Cave and his fellow Bad Seed, Warren Ellis (actually I guess technically Nick isn’t a Bad Seed, maybe just a fellow bad seed?), make such compelling music together, their Soundtrack work really is something delicious and once again here, even if these pieces mostly clock in at under two minutes, or maybe because of it? This really is a beautiful collection of music. Drenched in atmosphere, in dark warmth, in glow, in beautiful restraint, in mournfully radiant colour. The fact that these are just sound bites, small bits of film soundtrack, leaves them open to all kind of interpretation, to all kinds of speculation in terms of where they might be going, or maybe it is because they don’t need to go anywhere? That they don’t need a start or a finish? Maybe it really is because they can just be exactly what they are here? 

Almost entirely instrumental, almost entirely hushed, dark colours, glowing colours, all deep red and burnt umber, I guess i really should look up the film of the Nick Cave book, the book was originally published in 2009 – the film isn’t actually a film now I check, it is a just released last month six-part television series but I know little about Mr. Cave’s second work of fiction, a book that follows Bunny Munro, a middle-aged, sex-addicted door-to-door beauty product Brighton-based salesman. The music here is haunting, at times gritty, never obviously so though. Sometimes melancholic, I don’t know about the book, the soundtrack is darkly beautiful, richly so. As a stand alone thing, as an album of short pieces of music that don’t need a top or a tail, as just that, without (much knowledge of) the book or the film or mini TV series, just as a collection of pieces of music, just as one whole piece of art, just as an album, there is so so much to reward here. 

The nearest thing we have to a song besides the harrowing almost  uncomfortable closing piece Dance With The Devil is the Grinderman-esque menace of Love One Another (Or Die), a piece perfectly placed about two thirds of the way through the album. It is mostly a very calming album, and of course Warren Ellis is no sidekick here or anywhere for that matter, it’s superglue, and Warren’s fingerprints as well as his strings are all over this. An album that is, as well as being a rather compelling soundtrack, an album that is something entirely of its own. 

 This is the actual soundtrack music of course, not the music by other artists featured in the TV series, this is just the background/incidental music, not that it is background or incidental in terms of this as an album and as slow and languid, as as heavy on those mournful strings as Cave and Ellis soundtracks usually are, and as mostly instrumental as it is, and as difficult as the subject matter might be, as uncomfortable as it all apparently is, this is a beautiful album. This a beautiful piece of almost sanguine work, just as the music I mean, without any consideration for the book or the TV series, just as the music, just as this body of music… (sw)             

Bandcamp / Invada Records – Released December 19th 2025.