What really struck me the most about it was the power of the accompanying sound design and music, by Amon Tobin, to completely affect one’s perception of the visuals. On first viewing I was convinced it was some kind of high-end CGI at work. When you look at the making of pictures (check the Shocklee site), you realise it’s all done with paper, sand and light. To turn something so simple into what appears to be a terrifying machine from the distant future is quite a feat and Amon’s amazing soundtrack plays a massive part in this.
Cavendish Music just released a double album featuring four tracks by me. The concept was pretty basic, take some of your favourite classical themes and rework them into a modern genre. It’s obviously nothing that hasn’t been done before…
… but it is something that gets you thinking. They’re classics for a reason, brilliant melodies, powerful harmonies, strong thematic development; it’s very hard to really add anything that makes it great for a new reason. In truth, it’s music for broadcast and synchronisation, so I shouldn’t have been worrying about that, rather about making it bright, uplifting and recognisable. The problem was that I’ve never been able to get Exile’s Population Control out of my head, where he takes the essence of Tchaikovsky’s Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy and flips it into head-nodding goodness…
the other approach is to take the instantly recognisable theme, and give it timbres that composers of hundred years ago or more could never have dreamed of like Eprom did recently…
For my attempts I took Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 and turned it into a hip hop headnodder. I always liked the cheeky accelerandi from this one, so I’ve recreated those too for extra wackiness.
Next is Asturias by Albeniz; exotic and building in drama, I gave it a euphoric club feel. Transposing this from solo piano or guitar into beat form gave me an opportunity to build even more, using more and more synths and fx.
My favourite of the bunch is my take on the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen, a kind of glitch tango that does its best to recreate the kind of crazy sensuality that Carmen’s character exudes.
Finally there’s a take on Zadok The Priest; Handel’s coronation work was adapted by UEFA to form the Champion’s League theme/anthem, so hearing it always fills me with tension and nervous excitement. My downtempo version is an attempt to recreate this feeling in anyone who hears the track, with throbbing chords and a heartbeat incorporated into the drums. When I hear this version now, I can picture Wayne Rooney placing the ball on the penalty spot, staring into the keeper’s eyes and taking one final deep breath before striding forward and smashing the ball into the roof of the net.
Helping others to enjoy slightly more complex and interesting music has always been high on my list of motivations, so I jumped at the chance to get involved with Gabriel Prokofiev’s Nonclassical label, who promote contemporary classical music through very current methods such as club nights and remixing.
Their latest release, Tangled Pipes, is by recorder ensemble Consortium5. Don’t make your asumptions just yet though, the album makes for a challenging but satisfying listen. I was given the chance to remix Brian Inglis’ Burmese Pictures for the online remixes album, deciding to take the uplifting feel to the opening few bars and add a big ravy edge to it. The main rule was that I could only sample the track I was remixing; no synths, no drums, everything taken from the original. Althoug this was hard enough, in Burmese Pictures – Arun Sethi Rangoon Remix, I’ve tried to use an interesting structure, taking bits from both dance and classical forms.
I got the mix notes through while waiting for a plane to Cuba, so last minute changes had to be done over the phone… but luckily there wasn’t too much to be done!
Long time no update… guess I’ve been more focused on making music and looking into some exciting new ventures…
Last year’s hard work on getting back into things is starting to pay off… here’s a set of drones I put together for ImagemPM‘s Strip Sounds production music library. I’d never tried sound design before, and it was definitely quite a learning curve (you can probably work out which one I wrote first). Nevertheless, it was surprisingly fun and creative; sampling and looping reverb and delay tails, singing and slapping shit loads of effects on it all!
Coming up in the next few weeks should be the Consortium5 album on the Nonclassical label, which features a remix of mine on the digital download, and some more production music, including the remixes of famous classical pieces that I mentioned on here before I destroyed my earlier blog!
17, that difficult age of wanting to go out and party, but having nowhere to go. Me, Robbie and Lewis were out and drunk in Camden; we turned down a street and walked into big David Okumu, the awesome guitarist from the Tomorrow’s Warriors, the house band for the Jazz Cafe Sunday jam sessions. Being young regulars at the jam, we showered him with praise, before stumbling off into the night.
A couple of hours later we attempted to walk into the Jazz Cafe, but the bouncer was having none of it. We had a kind of minor beef with the guy too which made it all the worse. But who was that standing in the doorway? Who else but big David Okumu, who strode forward, turned to the bouncer and said: “These are my boys, they’re coming in”. I’m still grateful for that moment…
These days, Dave is fronting Mercury-nominated trio The Invisible. It’s like a live-band version of all the wonky/post-dubstep ish that’s going on, and it’s seriously addictive. Check out the video to London Girl below, and the Joe Hot Chip remix after that… also, the album’s a snip on Amazon at £3.99. Just sayin’…
The Invisible – London Girl (Joe Hot Chip Remix)
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Today, thanks the awesome Donut Project, I discovered the work of Norman McLaren. Norman worked on animations drawn directly onto 35mm film, rather than through pictures which were then photographed. Apparently, the sound is also found on the film itself (hence the name ‘soundtrack’ I suppose), and in the 1940s Norman soon began experimenting with drawing sounds straight onto the strip where the sounds are read from, creating some kind of avant-garde electronic music that probably wasn’t recreated for quite some time after. This video introduces all these concepts, and McLaren, a lot better than I ever could:
pretty cool huh?…
The style leads to some pretty interesting short films. In Dots, the sound and visuals are pretty much interdependent – neither would really work or be interesting without the other, but together they create a fascinating experience, maybe not particularly complex, but fascinating all the same!
This final film, ‘A Phantasy’, had me giggling at points. I’m not really sure why to be honest but I think it’s just the unexpectedness and unpredictability of the visuals throughout. Here, an existing soundtrack has been augmented through McLaren’s sound-drawing techniques. As a lot of it is even in tune with the original music. I wonder how long it took him, and whether he wrote over the soundtrack physically or if it was a lot of trial and error. Either way, I don’t think anyone since has written, or does write, music where the acoustic and electronic are so organically combined.
Anyone who’s followed this blog even a bit will probably know that I’m pretty into the idea of visuals bringing out the way music sounds and works – see this Renaud Hallee video for an idea. The money going into live shows at the moment means that a lot of the bigger artists are doing some interesting stuff. I loved UVA‘s Manhattan-esque screen backdrop for Jay Z’s Blueprint 3 tour, and The Who’s stage for their Superbowl set this year absolutely wowed me too.
Some of the more epic DJs have been getting in on the act for a while, with Daft Punk’s world famous pyramid being the obvious example. A mate of mine put me onto Etienne de Crecy’s cube the other day which I think is equally awesome.
For the artist performing on a smaller stage, it’s a much more difficult task, but I think Nosaj Thing‘s experiments with live visuals prove that it’s definitely possible to do something impressive. OK, it’s not like he doesn’t have some backing, but it shows what we performers should be thinking about doing. Thanks to AudioAndroid for the link.
OK… so about a week ago I managed to destroy my website and blog etc etc. I was thinking about changing it all anyway, but still a bit pissed off about losing all my posts from the last year or so. I’m still working on getting some of them back, but thought I should put something up for you all to enjoy while I sort it out.
So here’s a track I’ve been working on which mixes a lot of the music I’ve been listening to recently, a kind of (excuse the qualifier!) blend of wonky (loving the new FlyLow), minimal tech (check out Stephan Bodzin) and general organic electronic music (Caribou’s Swim is my favourite LP so far this year).
