DANCE AWAY

 

In Rotte Sun (Red Sun, 1970) four West German women decide to kill as many men as they can. It's a groovy era, though, so even with a packed agenda, there is always time to cut a rug. 

Red Sun tries very hard to be daring in terms of its attitudes toward life, death, sex and revolution but is far too turgid and muddled to shock. It is oddly compelling, however, rather like watching the old, slow, pleasantly boring early iteration of reality TV show Big Brother, just punctuated by murder rather than arguments about who's eaten all the cereal. 

SET YOUR LIFE ON FIRE

Ruins were formed in 1978 in Mestre, a small town just outside of Venice where I once stayed for a few days in the late eighties. In the long, warm Summer evenings, the people of the town would gather in the main square and drink wine and socialise and dance to angry electronic music about how horribly bourgeois they all were, something that growing up in rural Essex had not prepared me for. I genuinely miss the place.