The Suborbitals

The Suborbitals perform two sets of music, including an original score to the silent film, “Häxan or Witchcraft Through the Ages.” The performance will include text from the 1968 version’s Williams S. Burroughs narration.

Häxan is a 1922 Swedish-Danish documentary-style silent horror film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Based partly on Christensen’s study of the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century German guide for inquisitors, Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch hunts. The documentary film contains dramatized sequences comparable to horror films. With Christensen’s meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the U.S. and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion. It is now considered to be Christensen’s finest work. In 1968, William S. Burroughs narrated a version of the film. This text is a classic example of the wry and beautifully wrote prose of the famed Beat writer. The Suborbitals have chosen to include much of this narration in their version of the film.

Described as ‘a literary high,’ The Suborbitals are a Monterey band that enjoy near-cult status for their dark, seductive live shows. Driven by an incomparable rhythm section and woven together with wild flourishes of saxophone and keys, their sound is highlighted by lurid melodies and unshakable lyrics.