Following their sell-out show at LSO St.Luke’s, the Cabinet bring their extraordinary score for Murnau’s Expressionist masterpiece to the Union Church, Margate as part of Margate Film Festival, 30th Oct 2021 , launching a year-long celebration of the film’s 100th birthday throughout 2022.

The score – inspired by the late Ennio Morricone and featured on BBC World Service ‘Paddle Out’ (at 9mins 30) – uses a range of voices– harp, guitar, viola, clarinet and percussion – to reflect the film’s pioneering expressionism, its fascination with wilderness, Ruinenlust (ruin fascination) and plague fixation, placing it in the years following the Spanish flu pandemic. Glissandos and soaring vocal lines underscore Murnau’s celebrated shots of mountains, rolling waves and billowing fabric, while Spaghetti Western guitar carries Hutter’s carriage on its dream-journey to the “land of the phantoms”. On reaching the castle, celebrated harpist Gareth Wilkins assumes Count Orlok’s unearthly shapes and shadowy world: his verminous hands, the chimes of his skeleton clock, the coffin-like arches and vertiginous staircases.