Author: Theo Power

I enjoyed this project very much, as I think everyone making a collaborative album is an exciting prospect. It gives us an opportunity as artists to get exposure, and to work together to support and uplift one another. It gave me an opportunity to improve my skills as a sound artist, and to further my skills in styles of music that I had not previously worked on.

Furthermore, it gave me the opportunity to indulge myself in things that I have never done. Like researching psychoacoustics, creating a dystopian soundscape, learning about graphic scores, and releasing a collaborative album. I really enjoyed the possibilities I got with this project, like the opportunity to create a sound piece in which I had a lot of creative freedom. This is great for a collaborative release, as each track will be unique and different from the rest.

What I could have benefitted from was some more support and information about the project before starting the work. Luckily, before the deadline, some information was put on Moodle to help us but I found myself needing a little extra help. I really enjoyed looking at psychoacoustics and researching how humans perceive and interpret sound. I would like to take a further look at graphic scores in the future and would like to incorporate them into my work, such as releasing one with my album or a piece. I feel like what I need to improve for my next project is my planning and execution. I felt a little rushed in completing my work and if I had started planning earlier I would have had more time to enjoy the project.

I started working on this sound piece with an Ableton pre-set called ‘dark one’. I then ran it through Valhalla Supermassive, which is a reverb plug-in. I used this as my main instrument to work from. I did consider using the Mother 32, which I mentioned in a previous blog, but while I was starting out with Ableton I found this sound and thought it was perfect. I then layered a lo-fi synth lead on top and took a speech passage from a movie called ‘Taste Of Cherry’. I transposed it down, reversed it, and ran it through a plug-in called ‘wires’, which emulates the sound of a soviet wire recorder. This gives it a very grainy and alien sound. The reason I chose the movie ‘Taste of Cherry’ was because it deals with the themes of suicide and mental illness, which is a prominent theme in my music. The movie is about a man wanting to commit suicide and his search for someone to help bury him once he’s dead, but because he lives in Iran it is much more difficult, as suicide is seen more as a taboo. The reason I admire this film is because it is very minimalistic and quite powerful. It is not a graphic film, receiving a PG rating by the BBFC.

As mentioned, my track was made using Ableton, using a mixture of Ableton presets and my own sounds. I used a field recording I made in October 2021 with Jose on a field recording trip, which was a contact mic placed up against a vent on the Southbank. I took this and transposed it down, and panned it. I also used some fx sounds I found on Ableton. As the piece has a gritty, dystopian sci-fi feel to it, I thought the use of fx could be an interesting way to add some more depth. Also, as I mentioned in a previous blog, Tod Dockstader created special fx sounds for his work in Television and Film. I thought it would be a good fit for my piece. I used another drone for the end of the piece but tried to keep the track as minimal as possible. With ambient music, I find the most interesting ambient/dark ambient music is made with minimal materials/sounds.

Doing something different, to me, means wanting to do something different from my past work, especially in terms of what I’ve created for my Sound Arts course. My work so far has primarily been dominated by Harsh Noise & Power Electronics. I would like to show my versatility as an artist to both myself and my peers. I’ve dabbled in Dark Ambient before, but it’s something that I wanted to make more of a focus to improve upon.

The way I started to prep myself to create more Dark Ambient/drone tracks is to listen to some releases under that genre. This would help to refresh my knowledge and to do some critical listening to discover more than I previously knew.

Albums

1. Sunn O))) – ‘Flight of the Behemoth‘

This Sunn O))) record is one of my personal favourites. The album primarily consists of fuzzy, distorted guitar drones. I find it interesting as it creates a rich, dark atmosphere with analog equipment. It is also a traditional instrument that I find inspiring. This piece shows drones can be made from all sorts of instruments, common and obscure. The record also features two tracks with noise music artist and maestro, Merzbow. He is well known and appreciated for pioneering noise music (in particular Japanoise), and his harsh, brooding style.

The works featuring Merzbow take low guitar drones and manipulate them with effects, turning them into noise hits. Merzbow uses samples of dissonant piano chords over the guitars. As the song continues, he brings in his signature squealing noise which is prevalent in a lot of his music.

This record was very helpful to revisit for this project. I really like the use of guitars to create a hellish atmosphere. As a fan of Merzbow, I thought the collaboration with him was particularly inspiring.

2.Tod Dockstader – Areils 1

As mentioned in a previous blog, Tod Dockstader’s ‘Ariels 1’ is a masterclass in Dark Ambient. This is one of Dockstader’s final releases, it was released in 2005 as the first part of the Ariels trilogy before he passed away in 2015. Dockstader had been making experimental music since the ’60s, so was a master in the craft by the release of this album. It is texturally rich, emotional, and well-balanced. This is one of my favourite examples of modern ambient work.

3. David Lynch & Alan Splet – ‘Eraserhead‘ Soundtrack

This soundtrack is also a good example of drone/Dark Ambient music. David Lynch and Alan Splet both work together to create a truly terrifying and unsettling atmosphere. This soundtrack stands well on its own. The soundtrack was made in the ’70s using D.I.Y. techniques and analog gear. Lynch and Splet would come up with creative ways to achieve the sounds they wanted to create, with the shoestring budget they had.

Listening to this again was a great way to understand Dark Ambient/drone music made at a different point in history, and to remind myself of one of the most influential soundtracks for this genre.

Bibliography

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Eraserhead: Original Soundtrack Recording. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b5WTcePU2k

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Song. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK5R1p7be_4&list=RDLK5R1p7be_4&start_radio=1&rv=LK5R1p7be_4&t=1

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Sunn O))) – Flight of the Behemoth (Full Album). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkcHJ5YnvbU

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As mentioned in my previous blog, I have decided on what I wanted to do stylistically and what I wanted to accomplish in general. In this blog, I will talk about my overall plan so far for the piece. What instruments I want to use, what sounds I want to create, and how it’s all going to come together.

1. DAW?

The DAW (digital audio workspace) I use is Ableton. The reason I like using Ableton as a sound artist is the room to experiment. The way Ableton is designed is to give the artist a lot more creative control. I like the layout of Ableton, it’s quick to access instruments from the DAW itself and very stress-free to record external equipment. This is why I gravitate towards this DAW for my projects.

2. Instruments (Analog)

Mother 32 – The Mother 32 is a semi-analog desktop synthesizer by Moog. It has a patch bay, but it’s not required to make sounds. The Mother 32 is great for creating buzzing and low drones. Particularly when being run through a reverb like Valhalla Supermassive, the sound feels wide and dense. One of the best features of the Mother 32 is the frequency knob, which when used can create a very unsettling and uncomfortable atmosphere. Overall, I enjoy using it to create a solid base to work with. It also helps to expand my knowledge about analog gear.

3. Instruments (Virtual)

Ablet0n has a wide range of instruments. Additionally. you can download packs with specific sounds on their website. Personally, I am very fond of a pack called ‘Drone Lab’. ‘Drone Lab’ is an experimental sound pack that comes with samples of drones, noise, and other experimental sounds. It also comes with midi kits to create your own soundscapes and instruments. This pack is great for adding more to the piece or to help you build a foundation to then expand.

Deciding what the sound piece should be is the first and sometimes the most challenging part of the whole process. The great thing about creating a sound piece is that there are so many types of sound to make. Whether it’s more Musique Concréte based (e.g. John Cage) or Dark Ambient (Tod Dockstader) or a collection of field recordings (‘Secret Piece’ – Clipping). There are also many more examples of unique sounds to make.

In the past, I have often defaulted to creating noise/power electronics pieces. I still continue to make those compositions for my solo work, but I wanted to try something different for this piece and composition to show more of my versatility as an artist. So after some contemplation, I decided to do a dark ambient sound piece.

Dark Ambient as a genre contains characteristics such as dark and deep drones, long repeating notes, and eerie sound design techniques. An example of Dark Ambient music that inspired my piece was Tod Dockstaders track ‘Shout’ of his record ‘Ariels 1’. Tod Dockstader was a sound designer and experimental music artist. He worked on television shows such as ‘Tom & Jerry’ in the 60s, creating cartoonish and playful sound design for the children’s television show. During that time he was also creating avant-garde music, which started to gain some traction during the ’70s-’80s, working with sound artists like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. One of his most notable works was used in Federico Fellini’s film ‘Fellini Satyricon’.

The aforementioned track ‘Shout’ was what inspired me to use this style for my track, as I wanted to try my hand at that genre and push my boundaries as a sound artist. The track fades in with wishy-washy drones that sound like they are flanged slightly, with harmonies barely breaking through the heavily reverberated drones. This gives it a melancholy and hopeless feeling. I find it to be a beautiful piece, but equally haunting. This is what I endeavored to accomplish.

Sound Design is a crucial element to building an atmosphere in a piece of media, whether it is a film, radio, video game, etc. It can completely change the way a scene is interpreted. For example, if you took a scene from Eraserhead, took out the industrial sound design and replaced it with silly clown music. It would completely change the atmosphere of the piece. Hense in my piece, I made the sound design a key element to provide the tension that the writing is trying to give. The style of writing was made to leave room for the sound design to greaten the tension of the piece.

A great example of sound design is used to help create and change the atmosphere would be Gaspar Noe’s film Climax. As with my last blog, you can see Gaspar has a way with sound design. The plot of the climax is in short, a dance group in France are preparing to tour the united states with their dance troop. The rehearsal space is an abandoned school and as they celebrate their rehearsal, someone spikes the sangria with LSD. And the bad trip starts from there.

The soundtrack is a list of back to back disco and electronic classics. Starting from Cerreons ‘Supernature’ to Aphex Twins ‘Windowlicker’. The reason this is important is that during the movie as the camera flies through the school, you can hear this thumping constantly in the background, like being in a nightclub toilet. And it creates this horrifically uncomfortable atmosphere. Here is a clip. I like the way this movie uses music that you wouldn’t normally associate with a bad time. I used this idea by using familiar sounds like Swing chains (which I personally associate with being a child) and using them in a different context to create a sense of familiarity and uncomfortableness.

For the sound design, I made use of dark, low, brooding drones. Coated in reverb layered over other drones to create a dense and uncomfortable atmosphere. I used the sounds we created in our foley session to help create the sounds of this industrial hell hole. I took the sounds of my classmates speaking and moving their mouths to create the sounds of tounges for the Columbian Necktie line.

Irreversible – Near Inaudible Frequency

*Caution: in this document, I discuss themes of sexual assault which is the center point of the film, I must stress this is all done with care and is taken very seriously on my part given the sensitive subject matter*

Here is the track that plays throughout the first 30 minutes of Gaspar Noe’s provocative cult classic Irreversible.

A background on Irreversible

Irreversible is the second feature film by filmmaker and provocateur Gaspar Noe. Irreversible premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2002 and instantly caused outrage and praise, both of which Gaspar thrives in. Below is the IMDb plot synopsis that describes the film in a short and concise way.

‘Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass.’

From that, you can see why the film caused outrage, even though the most difficult scenes in the film to watch were done very carefully to be respectful of the victims of these acts and to be safe for the actors. It is understandable why it upset people. Especially since the length of the aforementioned ‘rape scene’ is nearly 10 minutes in length. It brings up interesting moral dilemmas of ‘is it long for the sake of exploitation’ or to show how the act can cause such trauma on a person and the people that surround them.

The sound design

The music and sound design for Irreversible were handled by Thomas Bangalter (1/2 of daft punk). In terms of music, there is the use of techno and french house. For example, the track ‘Rectum‘ is played at the start of the film in the BDSM gay club. The track features these Shepards tone-esque synths that build this sense of anxiety and dread. As the track continues Thomas brings in these hard techno/hard bass drums that provide a bit more stability to the track. But as they don’t match with the pace of the synths, add even more to the feeling on unease. The drums become more audible at the climax of the scene, in which a character pummels a man’s face in with a fire extinguisher, believing him to be the rapist of his friend (but you do not know that at the time of this scene happening).

Famously the film uses a nearly inaudible 28hz tone that plays throughout the first 30 minutes of the film. This tone is to cause anxiety, vertigo, and nausea to make the first part of the film to be even more uncomfortable. It is an interesting trick and has been pretty common in movies before and since then. But because of the way it is used in Irreversible. It has become infamous. I decided to use this trick in my piece to subconsciously create more unease in the piece.

During the aforementioned rape scene. No music is played. The underpass has an echo to it, that provides an uneasy feeling before the scene takes place. And during the horrendous act. You only hear the actors and the sound design of this underpass. This is a smart move, adding music to a scene like this can take away from the gravity of the situation and would be incredibly inappropriate. So the use of only basic sound design and the actors voices was a good choice and showed how much care went into dealing with a scene as difficult as this.

References

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Subaudible Track from the movie “Irreversible.” [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuokWUhMGQc

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Thomas Bangalter – Rectum. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lMArVYkqZ8

Noé, G., Noé, G., Bellucci, M., Cassel, V. and Dupontel, A. (2002). Irréversible. [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/?ref_=ttgf_gf_tt

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An overview on Eraserhead

Eraserhead is the directorial debut of director, painter, sound designer, and overall artistic marvel David Lynch. The film was started as a student project while Lynch was studying at the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles, which is a graduate film school. He had created a few short films beforehand (The Alphabet, 1968. And The Grandmother, 1970) Eraserhead was filmed over a long period of time, filming started in 1972 and concluded in 1975. The reason it took so long to film was that they kept running out of money. And would film until they had literally nothing. Below is the IMDb plot synopsis.

‘Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.’

After the film was fully complete, Lynch met sound designer and musician Alan Splet, and the pair spent over a year creating the industrial and unnerving sound design that Eraserhead would become famous for. One example of how they created the sounds for Eraserhead would be this excerpt that you can read below.

“For a scene in which a bed slowly dissolves into a pool of liquid, Lynch and Splet inserted a microphone inside a plastic bottle, floated it in a bathtub, and recorded the sound of air blown through the bottle. After being recorded, sounds were further augmented by alterations to their pitch, reverb and frequency”.

Here is the scene they are talking about, the clip starts at the 3:42 mark.

How it influenced this project

The industrial hellscape that Lynch & Splet created for Eraserhead is iconic at this point, and for good reason. It was groundbreaking for the time and still is. The general tone of Eraserhead was what influenced the concept of the darkness throughout the piece, both sonically and through the spoken word. As in ‘Eraserhead’ you follow this character (Henry) who doesn’t really know what to do with his life. He has an unwanted child who is not even that human. He has a girlfriend that hates him and has a dead-end job. Which sparked this idea of ‘Life is a dark corridor’ which I used as the centre point of the spoken word. This character in this dream doesn’t know what to do. just wandering around this industrial and hellish landscape.

Sonically Eraserhead has influenced this project. The use of dark drones. field recordings, noise, and samples had an impact on this project.

References

www.imdb.com. (n.d.). Eraserhead. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/.

Areti Efstathiou (2016). The Grandmother – David Lynch. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liVa7nEm3JU.

Matteo Pini (2014). David Lynch The Alphabet. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ_t1eOAipo.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Eraserhead – The Woman Across the Hall. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr10sVW0h2g

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Who is Rebbeca Lennon?

Rebbeca Lennon is a British artist that works in various fields, those fields being video, text, performance, sound and music. She uses these fields to experiment with non-linear rhythms using her body, including her voice.

For me I found her lecture very interesting from a non vocalist point of view, and how she used her voice and how it created these dense layers using just the voice. It’s very reminicent of early Joan La Barbara work like ‘Twelvesong‘ off the album ‘Voice Is The Original Instrument’. But Rebbeca is very much doing her own thing with it which I found very interesting. Like on her peice ‘THE KNOT COMMONS 2021‘ She opens the peice with this rythmic vocal line. Then overlaying that with the phrase “This is mine, this is your’s’. Then using her voice to create a gasping noise that almost sounds like a drum. Also laying mouth clicks and different harmonies of the phrase “This is mine, this is your’s”

The way she used visuals was very complementary to the composition. The visuals of mosqitous sucking blood to the rythym of her voice was a good use of using music and visuals that are very different but go togther fluently.

This talk made me want to work with vocalists more (which I am doing as of now) and how I could utilies vocals in my work in the future.

References

Lennon, R. (2021). THE KNOT COMMONS 2021. [online] Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/641797899

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Joan La Barbara – Twelvesong. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SvVhDMLTbs

rebeccalennon.co.uk. (n.d.). rebeccalennon.co.uk. [online] Available at: https://rebeccalennon.co.uk/

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Brief introduction to musique concrète

Musique Concrète is a style of early electronic music, Pioneered by the likes of Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse, and Halim El-Dabh. The style of musique concrète is typically very raw, taking these raw sounds and using tape manipulation techniques and audio effects to alter these sounds. An example of musique concrete is Pierre Schaeffer’s ‘Études de bruits‘ which is a collection of compositions. This composition is from 1948 and some of the sounds used in the compositions are saucepans, canal boats, toy tops, percussion, instrument singing, speech, harmonica and piano. This compilation of tracks perfectly shows the how

How Musique Concrète helped the progression of Sound Art.

Artists like John Cage and Pauline Oliveros took the sounds of early musique concrète and pushed them further into the sound art scene in the 1960s and 1970s. By taking techniques like tape manipulation for example, and pushing it even further. A good example of this would be Pauline Oliveros’s piece ‘The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It’. This piece is about Pauline working at the University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio during 1966, and the guy who ran the tape/synth area of the university would yell at her when she would use the synthesizers and machines because he deemed it as ‘witchcraft’ or some nonsense like that. This also shows that musique concrète grew into expressing more emotions as well as pushing further sonically.

Musique Concrète in Sound Art During The Current Day?

Musique Concrète now is still prominent in current day sound art. One example would be composer Mark Korven’s homemade instrument called the ‘apprehension engine’. Mark Korven is a composer who is most well known for his work on director Robert Eggars films ‘The Witch’ and ‘The Lighthouse’, both of which had Mark create these atonal, and Avant-Garde soundscapes that relate back to the early days of musique concrète. The apprehension engine is a machine that is compiled out of metal rulers, a spring reverb tank, strings, and other pieces of equipment like the Ebow to excite the machine to create these horror movie-esque sounds. This I think is a fascinating way of taking old techniques of music concrète and early electronic music in general and putting a modern spin on it. I would highly recommend both The Witch and The Lighthouse as the sounds created for the movie are definitely up the alley of sound art and musique conrète.

References

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Mark Korven – Improvisation on the Apprehension Engine – YouTube. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbtuaIJKMI4.

TheBillser (2020). Pauline Oliveros ‎– The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CKVjO4wN5I.

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Musique concrète. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te.

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