Though we’re halfway through December, Hrvatski, aka Keith Fullerton Whitman, has not published a new monthly MP3 download on his website (reckankomplex.com). But don’t despair, because the site of Kranky Records (kranky.net) has posted an 18-minute KFW video for free download. Be forewarned that the file is some 90MB in size (.mov file here).
The video is for the track “Modena” off his album Playthroughs, which Kranky released in late 2002. The album is a series of sedate ambient pieces with serrated edges (glitchy drones? droney glitches?). Throughout he uses electric and acoustic guitars as his source material, but those sounds are so processed as to be largely unidentifiable as such. The video for “Modena” starts with images of clouds, and it soon becomes evident that it’s being shot from a passenger seat in a commercial airplane. If the cloud formations don’t suggest as much, eventually a bright yellow engine comes into view. The plane lands in the rain, and drops form on the window. Soon enough we’re in the air again.
Fullerton’s images are far simpler than his music. Where the sounds are heavily treated and layered, there’s little evidence of any sort of manipulation of the footage (at one point the image of a wing gets a ghostly second). The composition is beautiful, especially an extended sequence during which a snippet of the wing is viewable on the far right of the screen against an otherwise blank blue sky. It’s fitting that the majority of the film takes place aloft, because the music is heavenly.