Dean & Britta Soundtrack Warhol DVD

Plexifilm and Warhol Museum releasing 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests w/ Dean & Britta soundtrack.

By Blurt Staff

Plexifilm and The Andy Warhol Museum will release 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, a collection of featuring 13 of Warhol's “classic silent film portraits” of pop culture figures shot between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol’s Factory in NYC. Among the subjects including Nico, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, Dennis Hopper and more. Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips have created new soundtracks for the films, comprised of original music and cover songs. (The trailer is embedded at the end of this post.)

The studio will release two versions of 13 Most Beautiful: a limited-edition of 1,300 in a deluxe gatefold LP-style package with an exclusive poster and booklet. In addition, one frame from each of the 13 Screen Tests will be hand-printed as an archival gelatin-silver photograph in an edition of 100, with one print in each limited-edition package. Plexifilm is taking pre-orders for the limited edition ($250 a pop) at www.plexifilm.com in advance of the January 17 street date. The retail edition ($34.99) is due February 17 and is presented in a hardcover book with slipcover.

Bonus features on both editions include a behind-the-scenes documentary and a video interview with Dean & Britta about Warhol, the music, and the project. The booklet features brief biographies of each Screen Test subject as well as liner notes from the Warhol Museum's Thomas Sokolowski, Geralyn Huxley, and Ben Harrison. Wareham supplies notes on the music.

More details from the press release:

Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol shot nearly 500 Screen Tests, beautiful and revealing portraits of hundreds of different individuals, from the famous to the anonymous, all visitors to his studio, the Factory. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong keylight, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in slow motion, resulting in a fascinating collection of four-minute masterpieces that startle and entrance, mesmerizing in the purest sense of the word.

The 13 Screen Tests included are Paul America, Susan Bottomly, Ann Buchanan, Freddy Herko, Jane Holzer (Toothbrush), Dennis Hopper, Billy Name, Nico, Richard Rheem, Lou Reed (Coke), Edie Sedgwick, Ingrid Superstar and Mary Woronov.

Songwriters Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, formerly of the band Luna and currently recording as Dean & Britta, created new soundtracks for the 13 films, incorporating original compositions as well as cover songs. The musical sensibilities of Dean & Britta, as well as their keen interest in cinema and their experience with scoring films, including Noah Baumbach's acclaimed feature The Squid & the Whale, make them a perfect match for this project.

13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests with Dean & Britta is also being presented by The Andy Warhol Museum as a series of live multi-media performances. The original project was jointly commissioned by The Andy Warhol Museum and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts 2008 and will have its world premiere at The Byham Theater in Pittsburgh on Friday, October 24th. It will travel to contemporary arts centers, museums and festivals throughout the U.S. including the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio on November 20, 2008; Lincoln Center (American Song Book Series), New York, NY on January 17, 2009; Vancouver, PuSH Festival, January 30, 2009; Seattle Art Museum on February 6, 2009; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN on February 28, 2009; MCA Chicago on March 7, 2009; and Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA on March 28, 2009. Additional US dates and European performances will be announced soon.

DVD COVER:

13 MOST BEAUTIFUL… TRAILER: