Liked the Movie, Loved the App: Inception

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Have a piece up from this morning at boingboing.net taking a look at the brand new iOS app for the film Inception. The app is no mere highly branded phone fodder (you know, the ones packed with framed still images, weak interactive mini-games, and links to trailers for unrelated movies). It’s a lovingly realized rendition of the RjDj app, done in collaboration with the folks behind the film, including director Christopher Nolan and the film’s composer, Hans Zimmer, overseen by Michael Breidenbrüker of RjDj parent company Reality Jockey. Full piece: “Music Apps Killed the MP3 Star.”

Dream Machine: Four screen shots from the iOS app for the film Inception

A cursory search of this site finds almost two dozen mentions of RjDj since September 2009, most of them Twitter observations typed somewhere out in the world, where the software has taken a busker’s trumpet and turned it into a cellophane ribbon of ambient sound, or has echoed a pneumatic drill until it’s a dank minimal-techno beat. Often as not, these moments have felt filmic, bringing to mind sequences in Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46, when the light technological mediation of experience was enough to make one feel just ever so slightly in the future.

The adoption of RjDj as a part of the massively popular Inception franchise is a great opportunity for reactive sound to reach a broader audience.

It’s also a useful reminder of how context is essential in adapting to new ways of thinking about, and participating in, sound (and, yes, a marketing budget and Leonardo DiCaprio‘s blue eyes do help). As of this writing, the Inception app has a four-star average rating: 36 five-star, 11 one-star, 12 in between — and at least two of those negative reviews are purely technical (Bluetooth and iPhone functionality issues). The latest version of RjDj has, by coincidence, exactly the same number of five- and one-star reviews, but far more (38) in between — and out of the 8,631 reviews that RjDj has received thus far (Apple lets you see the ratings for the latest version of an app, and for the app over the history of its iterative upgrades), it has a three-star average rating, but there are more one-star reviews (2,187) than there are any of the other stars (five-star comes in a close second, at 2,160).

Sound, it’s worth noting, was an essential part of the structure of Inception. The film signaled a shift between dream levels by using an orchestration of a maudlin Édith Piaf pop song heard elsewhere in the film, slowed down almost beyond recognition (see: “On the Sudden Popularity of Glacial Sound”).

Anyhow, the full BoingBoing.net piece: “Music Apps Killed the MP3 Star.”

PS: I also realize that somehow I’ve managed to write two times in as many days about things that resolve back to the prog rock band Yes. In the Boing Boing piece on Inception, I reference Zimmer’s association with the band the Buggles, which was founded by two people who worked with Yes (Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes), and the day prior I interviewed the Bad Plus, who covered Yes’ “Long Distance Runaround” on its 2008 album, For All I Care.

Industrial Industrial Music = Folk Music (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

About a third of the way through Durán Vázquez‘s recent podcast at cronicaelectronica.org, there is a tea-kettle whine to end all tea-kettle whines.

[audio:
http://download.cronicaelectronica.org/cronicast068.mp3|titles=”Casa das Atochas (August 19 2010)”|artists=Durán Vázquez]

It is high and it is shrill, and it is pitched like a war cry and it is as insistent as a hungry infant. And yet, it is thoroughly enjoyable (MP3). It has, in this context, the quality of a high lonesome yodel in a country song, or of a piercing clarinet solo in a klezmer performance. The context is a roiling whir of mechanized activity — brushed-metal static and turbine roars, fissures of static magnified for the ear. Which is to say, it’s industrial industrial music. And which is to say, it is folk music: like much music made from the sounds of the automated environment, it’s a music that takes the world around us (the world we ourselves made: the built environment) and transforms it into something celebrates those sounds, and frames them for consideration outside their everyday context.

At almost 24 minutes in length, it’s a hefty listen, moving slowly through territory at once alien and familiar. According to a brief note, the recording was made live during a “Tan inauditos!!” (translated: “So unheard!!”) performance at Casa das Atochas, A Coruña City, Galicia (Spain), on August 19, 2010.

Best Acoustic Techno of the Year (Bad Plus Interview)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Bad Plus — the jazz trio best known for its covers of Black Sabbath and Vangelis, not to mention György Ligeti and Igor Stravinsky — is the rare jazz band that functions like a rock band. That’s what I focused on when interviewing Ethan Iverson, the group’s pianist, for a short piece recently. It’s available at csindy.com. The title track of the new Bad Plus album, Never Stop, may be the best electricity-free techno ever (a category that could do with more material). It was composed by the group’s bassist, Reid Anderson. It’s the band’s first album ever with no covers; it’s all originals by the band members (drummer David King, in addition to Iverson and Anderson). The editor gave my interview a great title: “Compose Yourself.”

And here are a few things that didn’t make the printed interview, due to length:

¶ The “Never Stop” song was written for an Isaac Mizrahi fashion show.

¶ Asked if he’d ever tried augmenting his piano electronically (in addition to the band’s interest in Aphex Twin, and the techno-ness of “Never Stop,” Iverson has played with digi-celllist Hank Roberts), Iverson said, “Reid works on electronica every day but I don’t know much about it. I just play the piano.”

¶ There are no current plans for remixes. Said Iverson, “What a nice idea — no plans yet, but you never know.”

Full story at csindy.com.

John Kannenberg’s Spalding Gray Tribute (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Sound artist John Kannenberg has remastered one of his most touching recordings, a tribute to the late monologuist Spalding Gray. The audio takes recordings made in 2003 on New York City’s Staten Island Ferry and transforms them into a lament for its troubled subject. The Ferry is associated with Gray because it is reportedly the last place he was sighted before disappearing; later, his body was discovered in the East River.

 
At nearly 20 minutes, it mixes a wide variety of sounds, including what could be highly processed bird song, the rumble of the ferry’s motor, and ringing bells. This is no simple elegy. For all its surface placidity, it is shot through with high-pitched sounds that edge toward anxiety. It also has a uniquely melodic component for a work, such as this, derived from field recordings. Especially after its midpoint, there comes to be heard a light melody, an eerie riff that resembles some of the more otherworldly recordings of Louis and Bebe Baron.

One thing to note is the dates. Gray died in 2004, and the recording was produced and released shortly thereafter (originally on Earlabs; this version was remastered this year). But the recordings of the ferry were completed by Kannenberg in 2003. Which means he had in his possession sounds that meant one thing before Gray’s death, and something else entirely after. Even without the sonic transformations inherent in Kannenberg’s processing, the association of Gray with the ferry gave those recordings new meaning after his tragic suicide. That simple gap in dates lends even more gravitas to the recording. Music built from field recordings is intended to, in some way, reflect our world back at us, slightly altered, and thus illuminate it in a special way. Since the ferry audio was transformed (in terms of meaning) simply by the fact of Gray’s passing, the piece casts a shadow on all field recordings, exemplifying how even raw documentation will change as context changes over time.

Track (title: “For Spalding Gray”) originally posted at soundcloud.com. More on Kannenberg at johnkannenberg.com.

(View of Staten Island from the ferry in 1998 from flickr.com by Gregory Melle. Used via Creative Commons.)