It’s Friday evening and I’m watching a music documentary; this time it’s Under the Volcano, which tells the story of the Air recording studio in Montserrat. It was built by George Martin and opened in 1979, offering “all of the technical facilities of its London counterpart, but with the advantages of an exotic location”. That exotic location – a lush, mountainous island in the Caribbean, blessed with sheltered coves and sandy beaches – seemed perfect for the luxury template that was to inform a certain strand of Eighties pop music. Think Duran Duran on their yacht in the “Rio” video, and you get the picture.
The film starts, however, at the end of the story, with the place in ruins. Devastated by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and major volcanic eruptions in the Nineties, the studio closed down and the abandoned buildings are now derelict, with leaking roofs and damaged floors. At the mercy of the elements, they have taken on that eerie quality of places that were once clean, dry and comfortable but where nature has now taken over.
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