The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstasy Blends Classic Rock and Modern Artistry Perfectly

Last September 12th, the British girlband The Last Dinner Party released a short film under the name “Prelude to Ecstasy”, honoring their freshman album’s title, and giving a bit of an insight to their journey as an emerging band. The premiere was held at the Prince Charles Cinema in London, shared across a few others around the UK, and is currently available to stream for free on YouTube. In the short film, portraying as members of a prestigious ballet academy, Abigail, Lizzie, Emily, Georgia and Aurora narrate a story through The Femenine Urge, Burn Alive and Sinner, in which the soundtrack becomes a character trapped inside Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn”. 

“Prelude to Ectasy” is not only a journey through their first album, but a vivid representation of what the group stands for in an artistical sense. And a confirmation that originality is created through the appreciation of what already exists. This short film acts as an additive to their first experience in the industry, as well as the finishing touch to a fruitful and consolidating stage as one of the greatest promises that British (and global) music has witnessed in years. 

It renews the experience of listening to the album and provides a different perspective to the twelve tracks that make up a career premiered for the public eye less than a year ago, but one that brings out not only an immeasurable talent, but also a lifelong process of musical nourishment. Documentaries about artistic creative processes are always rewarding because of the humanizing character exposed when things are explained in a vulnerable way. Feeling that a project that came to the audience's homes in a natural way was created, in fact, with such genuine intentions and for a more than obvious “love for the arts”, is the perfect formula to immortalize a sound that they themselves have created. 

They have effectively managed to combine elements from 80s rock and punk movements, gothic and alternative music anchored into a sixties beat, and created a distinctive style that will manage to turn them into the referenced muses for future generations. But what is most remarkable is the artistic generosity and rescuing role they are doing on behalf of classic rock: a genre condemned to harshness and incongruent nonchalance that is now realizing that electric guitars, flutes, indie beats and dresses fit, attract and broaden the target audience of a musical category that is getting a second life thanks to artists like Boygenius, and gaining beauty and inspirational value thanks to five girls enjoying making music in their twenties. 

There’s no ceiling for the seventies’ references included in the film, which serve as a consolidating sign of the group's sound; it can bring back the harmonic battle between Frida Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog, and immerses the audience in a Luca Guadagnino's “Suspira” scene at the same time. The film alludes to countless artistic works including “Hammer House of Horror”, “Don't Look Now”, “Rebecca”, “Wuthering Heights”, “If”, “Flashdance”, “Pearl”, “Hausu”... that are disguised through a common thread that integrates all the elements inside of the same storyline and gives them meaning. Harv Frost’s impeccable cinematographic direction sets in motion and evidences a talent that, despite being still in the emerging phase in commercial terms, is more than established as a concept in itself. 

There isn’t much more room to cover. The originality, the effort to ensure beauty and the character arc that each and every member possesses, highlights an artistic vision of music that does not currently exist outside of the group. In an environment where everything seems to be already invented, they have taken over a genre by simply investing aesthetically and emotionally in it. And for doing so without fear. 

The production or reinvention of an artistic concept does not have to be accompanied by shame and seriousness to hold academic value; and The Last Dinner Party proposes a kind of amusement that has been somewhat forgotten when it comes to artistic conceptualization. Being romantic and showing the public eye that your work gives you satisfaction is what creates the standard figures of a field. And for Abigail, Lizzie, Emily, Georgia and Aurora, the framework of possibilities has no boundaries. Someone will eventually drink from their fountain.