- Working in Menlo-Regular. Maybe I don't need Consolas after all. #
- Heard fan on Macbook Air for first time since Tuesday purchase. Now back to silent. #SSD #
- Whenever I use the term "program music" I am concerned a reader will think I mean "program as in 'computer program.'" #
- Guy outside working fervidly in cold on massive phone-line switch box. He turns around. I'm surprised he's not Robert De Niro in Brazil. #
The Score Before the Film (MP3)
To listen to a score to a film before one witnesses the film for which it was composed is to experience a kind of unintentional program music. It’s to listen to music that follows a story but that doesn’t express it verbally or visually — that is, it is to hear music that relates to a story, but that doesn’t relate the story.
If you have a favorite film-music composer, this can be a great way to experience a new film: listen to Cliff Martinez’s scores before going to the recently released Drive or Contagion, for example, and the music will be just that much more present during the viewing. It won’t be so present as to overwhelm the film, but it will bring the sonic elements more into focus, not just the elements within the score, but the sometimes enticingly ambiguous places where the score ends and the rest of the film’s sound environment begins.
In the case of Sun Hammer‘s score to the short film Forgiveness, by director David Meiklejohn, which the composer just posted for free (actually pay-what-you-want, so do feel free to pay something) at bandcamp.com, it means an opportunity to experience a greater-than-usual distance between score and film. This is because the film is a small production, and its imagery doesn’t precede it, in contrast with the massive promotional campaigns that serve Hollywood films as advance scouts into the consciousness of future viewers. Forgiveness is reportedly a tale of revenge. According to its production company, at damnationland.com, the story goes as follows: “A vengeful spy survives an assasination attempt and takes revenge on the man that tried to kill her.” It certainly sounds like a taut thriller, and the score matches the bare logline with a spartan approach: wells of sound, percussive anticipation, stretches of static-laden noise. It never has the music-by-the-yard pulsing of standard thriller scores, and stretches at times into a psychedelic realm that raises one’s expectations for the film. The various cues are separated by momentary pauses across one single track, breaking the program music into an enjoyably sequential experience.
Track originally posted at sunhammer.bandcamp.com. More on Sun Hammer, aka Virginia-based Jay Bodley, at twitter.com/sunhammer and soundcloud.com/sunhammer. (Music found via twitter.com/falsereactions.)
Dark Side of a Pixel Moon
An essay to accompany the work Blackwork by Paolo Salvagione
The artist Paolo Salvagione, whom I have assisted on a variety of projects this past year, has an exhibit opening this evening in Oakland, California, at the gallery Aggregate Space (aggregatespace.com), as part of the Art Murmur event (oaklandartmurmur.org). His Missing Window installation (shown at the bottom of this post) will be on view, as will a new series of works collectively titled Blackwork. I wrote an essay for Blackwork, as I have for other recent Salvagione projects.
Up top are examples of Blackwork, in which voids are cut with lasers into blocks of thick paper, according to patterns developed in CAD software.
Shown above is the printed essay, as designed by our friend Brian Scott of Boon Design (boondesign.com). The “10.6μm” on the front of the piece refers to the wavelength of the laser that cut the paper.
And this is the text of the essay:
“Dark Side of a Pixel Moon”
The tightly packed layers of black card stock could, from a distance, be mistaken for sample swatches, or perhaps acoustical tiling. Upon approach, however, the deep impressions in them become apparent, and in turn they make a deep impression. There are angular indents, and sharp holes, and conical excavations. These are quizzical things, enticing geometries that seem at once iconic and whimsical. The impressions suggest some form of impact introduced them to the thick paper. The step-like quality of the indents imply the ravages of motion, arcade asteroids hitting the dark side of a pixel moon.
The various cavities were, it turns out, cut by a laser. The sheets of card stock were sliced one at a time, and then stacked to reveal the shapes — not the other way around, despite what the eye perceives. Then again, the paths were first traced in CAD software — sketched, then refined, then turned into instructions for the laser-cutter. In effect, the hypothetical space, though not the card stock itself, was stamped by a kind of virtual die.
A vacuum inside darkness, a void inside a shadow — each piece embodies a double negative. The emptiness of pure black space is given shape when something is cut from it. This double inversion fuels the viewer’s sense of disorientation. The artist acknowledges the disorientation by suggesting the works have no specified top, bottom, or sides — that they can be displayed on a wall in any alignment, or flat on a horizontal surface for that matter. However they are displayed, their sense of scale goes in and out, undulating like the naked speaker cones whose tar-paper material they resemble — as well as that of a field camera’s crinkling bellows. They veer in the mind’s retina from macro to micro, from architectural to textural, from lunar landing to Petri dish, and then back again, and again.
Regardless of scale, these laser-cut steps, these playful 8-bit Bezier curves, invite the eye to travel along, to walk amid geologic artifacts in imaginary landscapes.
Here are two previous essays I wrote to accompany work by Salvagione: “Where the Sky Begins” and “Addressing the Competition.” I also served as Euphonic Coordinator (i.e., Music Supervisor) for a video documenting his exhibit “An excuse to respond.”
This is a photo of installation of Missing Window, which is also part of the Aggregate Space exhibit:
More on Paolo Salvagione’s work at salvagione.com, which recently launched, thanks to the efforts of Boon (boondesign.com) and futureprüf.com.
More on the exhibit via Salvagione’s facebook.com account. There will be a closing event on December 3. The Aggregate Space gallery is at 801 West Grand Avenue in Oakland, California. Its hours are Fridays from 5:00pm to 8:00pm and Saturdays from 1:00pm to 4:00pm.
Blackwork photos by Heimo (heimophotography.com). Missing Window photo by Andria Lo (andrialo.com).
Radere Live in Boulder (MP3)
Over at percussionlab.com, Radere (aka Carl Ritger) posted a live set he performed at this year’s Communikey festival in Boulder, Colorado. Opening with shimmering guitar and cloud-break choral effects, the piece builds in density and intensity, as if the soft-focus sounds are slowly brought into stark relief, and their fractured surfaces are revealed for all their grizzled imperfection, and yet in turn those imperfections come to urge their own sense of wonder. In other words, it’s downright fractal.
I’d interviewed Ritger for a story about Communikey in advance of the festival (“Ghost in the Machine”), and was glad for the opportunity to, belatedly, hear his set. The brief descriptive note at Percussion Lab, and at Ritger’s soundcloud.com/radere account, note that he used “Guitar, pedals and laptop” and that he performed material from two of his releases, A Season in Decline and Lost at Sea, I’m Never Coming Back.
However, like as with any good music, repeated listens brought questions, and so I asked Ritger to discuss the performance a little more thoroughly.
Marc Weidenbaum: What was the equipment you used?
Carl Ritger: The primary element in all of my performances is the guitar, which I run through a constantly evolving array of pedals and processing stages. This particular set was one of my last using my laptop as a processing tool, actually. I had my guitar patched into a preamp, an overdrive, and a variety of delay pedals before hitting the soundcard. From there, the signal went through a bunch of granular effects and things of that nature, resulting in the swelling drones that you hear in the recording. The laptop was also running a few layers of field recordings and textural elements, which were culled from several releases, including stuff I’ve done for the labels Full Spectrum and Basic_Sounds.
Weidenbaum: What was the performance space?
Ritger: I performed at the Communikey headquarters during the festival, which was located in the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a beautiful space with nice hardwood floors and plenty of natural light. Plus, a bunch of my friends from around the country were in the audience, including some I hadn’t seen in years. It was a really nice vibe.
Weidenbaum: What was your aesthetic goal?
Ritger: A lot of that material was produced during a pretty weird period in my life. I was pretty isolated, so I found my aesthetic shifting from quieter, minimalist place to a louder, slightly more abrasive sound. I guess in a sense, working with distortion and feedback more deeply provided a level of catharsis that more subtle forms couldn’t provide me with. The core of what I’ve always been interested in — signal processing, drones, minimalism — was still intact, but the volume was always inching upwards. I actually played a show out here in Boulder shortly after my relocation and the promoter was worried they were going to get their first noise complaint! I would never have imagined being faced with that sort of situation during a performance even just a year ago.
Track originally posted for free streaming and download at soundcloud.com/radere and percussionlab.com. More on Radere/Ritger at falsereactions.tumblr.com and twitter.com/crtgr.
Apparat’s ‘Breaking Bad’ Season Ender (MP3)
Both the German electronic musician Apparat and the music supervisors for the American TV series Breaking Bad found an interesting balance of licensing and scoring for the final episode of the recent season. The episode, which aired October 9 and closed out season 4, featured the Apparat song “Goodbye” — and yet it wasn’t the full song. It was an instrumental version, lacking the vocal of Soap&Skin (aka the Austrian singer Anja Plaschg). And because Plaschg’s vocal, despite its seeming transparency in the original, was lacking, the piece took on an entirely new meaning — Apparat’s steady if growing pulses serve as a grounding counterpoint to her slowly rising singing. In the absence of that singing, the Apparat instrumental takes on a greater sense of gravitas.
Apparat, aka Sascha Ring, subsequently posted the instrumental track at his soundcloud.com/apparat account for free streaming and download:
The full version of the song, with Plaschg’s vocal, can be heard in this video. It’s from Apparat’s recent album, The Devil’s Walk, on the Mute label. In a funny turnaround, the video to the full version of “Goodbye” makes use of pre-existing footage, in this case from the 1928 film Spione, or Spies, by Fritz Lang:
More on Appart at apparat.net and at mute.com/apparat.