Month: May 2024

There was discussion in our final crit and presentation about individuality and collectivism. In what can be called my ‘creative practice’, (I much prefer ‘making art’ or ‘working on a project’, this encouraged term carries some unwanted haughtiness) I try to draw a boundary between the art I create for me and the art I create academically. Aligning with a historical or contemporary artistic tradition is less than encouraged in the university, research-driven arena, where there’s an implicit expectation to independently engage with, assimilate, the cutting edge.

I find it extremely difficult to nakedly express my resistance to required sophistry and my partiality to the generic and the genre convention, to the naïve and the oft-explored. Especially perhaps to the unfashionable. It could well be that it isn’t for me to determine what is and isn’t fashionable in the art world, yet it’s arguable that romanticism and the sublime could firmly be on the list.

A large, undeniable interest that I make apparent in my work is the idea of the sublime. There is something cringeworthy in the figure of the nature worshipper; a touristic, shallow and fancifully self-inserted view of the world. Perhaps this is a product of the contemporary moment, as we all stare down the barrel of seemingly unavoidable ecosystem collapse. I am unsure if it is enough to state that I am not pluralistically, one-dimensionally ascribing myself to fawning nature worship, when I make work about the emotive power of the imagined mountain. Can I truly deny it? The truly great ecological poet and essayist Gary Snyder (1990, pp. 123) writes of Dōgen, Japanese Zen monk and his philosophic view of life and mountains; (preemptively I apologise for the length and number of references quoted in this post, but it feels wrong to butcher them)

‘The “Mountains and Waters Sutra” goes on to say:

All waters appear at the foot of the eastern mountains. Above all waters are all mountains. Walking beyond and walking within are both done on water. All mountains walk with their toes on all waters and splash there.

Dōgen finishes his meditation on mountains and waters with this: “when you investigate mountains thoroughly, this is the work of the mountains. Such mountains and waters of themselves become wise persons and sages” – become sidewalk vendors and noodle-cooks, become marmots, ravens, graylings, carp, rattlesnakes, mosquitos. All beings are “said” by the mountains and waters – even the clanking tread of a Caterpillar tractor, the gleam of the keys of a clarinet.’

I appreciate that a meditation is not so concise or pinpoint in terms of detailing an idea or argument in my blog, but I feel that that is the beauty of it. Snyder’s additions and commentaries expound upon Dōgen’s writings in such a lucid, expressive way. It makes me think of the famous jump cut in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. All things lead to, and enable, all other things. To make artworks about nature, about mountains, is a result of the work of mountains. Like many Buddhist Zen meditations, it presents so simple an idea, yet it continually unfolds and blossoms in your mind.

I am even given to say that I am unsure if sound art can truly express a meditation such as this. Sound is so wildly subjective, untethered to unrevealed contexts. If I have learned one solid lesson from this year, it’s that pure sound alone can really struggle to relay intent. I think that’s also why I want to experiment with when to sever the acousmatic, suddenly shine rays of light through the dark canopy. I know that I am lost very quickly in the acousmatic, glitchy soup without a handhold of some kind, be that reference material, genre. Maybe that says something about my own awareness, knowledge or willingness to be led into an uncertain, individual world.

The romanic tradition is deeply intertwined with individuality; the unique, reflective experience, and yet to ascribe to a pathway in the contemporary world is somewhat unheard of. Friedrich saw the instinctual, childlike inner artistic voice, its potential piousness, as the godly within us. Can I act and create romantically, then deny it by constructing an opposing philosophy?

A key encapsulation of the spiritual sentiments and influences of my piece is Caspar David Friedrich’s resonant 1818 painting, ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’. Despite the posthumous analysis and reassessment, lauding the work as a definitive masterpiece of the romantic era, his work has been investigated as a potentially problematic example of the ‘masculine genius’ figure, and Hitler’s weaponised, distorted endorsement of Friedrich’s legacy as a quintessential symbol of mythic Germanic nationalism muddied the intents of romanticism further. I have to believe that a spiritual investment in and appreciation of the natural world can help us in the present moment.

In his own words, ‘who wishes to know what alone is beautiful and who is able to teach it? And who can draw borders as to what is spiritual nature and make rules for it? Oh you dry leather average people, you always contrive rules!’ There’s the sting of Friedrich’s own institutional rejections and dismissals here, but there’s also a great sense of his boundless idea of nature’s spiritual freedoms and depths. It’s terrible divinity, and potential ways to meet with it.

I feel also a grudging kinship with Friedrich’s use of cyclical, recurring subject matter. In some respects, I feel that I can do no more with the inspirations and interests I laid out in this project. To mine them more in a field where the core must be explained, justified and textually supported feels like regression, I suspect. Still, I am drawn to them in my personal sensibilities. Koch (1988, pp. 7) details how ‘C.D. Friedrich’s art hardly varied during the course of his life. Even his first work which became known to a large public, “The Cross in the Mountains”, conveys a sense of natural mysticism and religious background. The construction of the landscape, the choice of staffage and the inclusion of people are always carried out following the same rules. A development cannot be seen. The result is an extraordinary perfection and harmony in the pictures.’ To some degree I believe this is hyperbole; despite a very clear confidence in technique and his interests, the varying hues and subjects of his work belie more than a dogged fixation. The point I see and try to bring to light is that faith in an idea can carry the artist for a lifetime. I am not saying that the conceptual frameworks I assembled for this project will last forever, but I cannot deny their continual resurfacing throughout my art life. Metal, the mountain myth, weather, our place in the landscape, the simulacrum, the romance of it all; these things will continue for me.

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Bibliography:

Snyder, G. (1990) The Practice of the Wild. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press

Koch, H. (1988) Caspar David Friedrich. Kirchdorf: Artline Editions

In researching artists to inform my creative sound project, I was led to the work of German composer Bernhard Günter. His creative practice engaging with minimalism, electroacoustic music and the fine aesthetic placement of sound, laid very sparsely yet purposefully together, is a core tenet in what is known as lowercase, which Günter is associated with. His album from 1989, ‘Un Peu de Neige Salie’, is an almost extreme focus of dedicated sound. So stark and minimalist that it may only suggest the particular aural obsessions of the artist. I immediately connected with his work, less to search for enjoyable qualities, but because it stands as definitive, inexorable proof that work this finely pointed and attuned to subtlety can be robust and engaging and strong. It reminded me of my own obsessive sitting in front of the bass amp at the start of this final project, turning dials so infinitesimally that, with some temporal distance, only I could perceive any progression or change by skimming through the timeline. I am excited by the confidence that, through Günter’s compositional work, careful, precise minimalism where every moment feels like a core and irremovable component is entirely possible. Certainly, this is an approach I have learned from and incorporated in the production of my final piece. The same deep listening I find myself sinking into, aurally exploring just one or two interplaying sonic objects, is a chief concern in Günter’s work also.

The comprehensive yet restrained compositional organisation of music and silence, movement and stillness, density and space, I see reflected in the Korean musical tradition of Gugak. At the Busan National Gugak Center in April 2023, I attended a performance of the third topic of the Gugak concert schedule, Sprinkle Rain, which was comprised of a number of curated, minimal scenes. Where Mozart may have composed a cavalcade of notes and movements for just one instrument, the Korean folk tradition emphasises the resultant flavour when minimal instruments, acts or the voice interact.

In Günter’s ‘Crossing the River (Night Music)’, he cites inspiration from the Buddha’s Zen teachings; ‘my teaching is like a raft used to cross the river’; also stating on his Soundcloud upload of the piece that, ‘the piece actually contains some sounds taken from a recording of a Buddhist ceremony’. There must be a parallel to be drawn between Günter’s interpretation of the sparsity and serenity found within Buddhist atmospherics. While I feel a certain anthropological discomfort with Günter looking in on Buddhist tradition as a sonic object to be interpreted, perhaps our European perception of the rituals of Zen is stark and spare, seeking a peaceful emptiness.

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For me, Popol Vuh from Munich, Germany, led by Florian Fricke, are the pinnacle of what is loosely classified as Krautrock. Known more widely for their contributions to the film scores of Werner Herzog, their febrile, majestic and wandering compositional work throughout their varied career have inspired me continually. Perhaps most significantly of all is their selection of instrumental palettes; initially engaging with the enormous Moog synthesizer on 1970’s ‘Affenstunde’, interweaving it with acoustic percussion and folk instrumentation.

This meld of the synthetic and the earthen, the simple electric and acoustic is a subject of fascination for me. Despite the dearth of reference material or direct information about Fricke’s creative practice, Herzog (2002, pp. 80) spoke of Fricke using a presumably self-built ‘choir-organ’, an instrument akin to a Mellotron for ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’: ‘For the music, I described to Florian Fricke what I was searching for, something both pathetic and surreal, and what he came up with is not real singing, nor is it completely artificial either. It sits uncomfortably between the two… the music has an artificial, eerie quality to it.’ In many ways, this same uneasy combination of the artificial and the authentic is an aspect I am reaching for in my final project work.

‘Wehe Khorazin’ from 1981, used the year after in Herzog’s film ‘Fitzcarraldo’, could be one of my most treasured pieces of music ever. In contrast to the elegiac tone of their earlier albums, this is a leaden, earthy and operatic dirge that carries a true sense of darkness and wonder. Daniel Fichelscher’s playing in the second half is inspirational in it’s pace and the guitar’s primitivist tone and suggestion of rhythm. The almost baleful overall yet worshipful chanting and suggests Fricke’s more overt exploration of Christian themes, rather than the sense of spirituality present in Popol Vuh’s prior work. Also inspirational is its combination of orchestral and acoustic with the electric, uniting two potentially disparate worlds.

Despite not appearing on the recording of ‘Wehe Khorazin’, with the incorporation of guitar on my piece, and as a guitarist first, I wanted to reference the work of Conny Veit. Notable here during the opening sequence of Herzog’s documentary ‘The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner’ His liquid, gestural performative and playing style suggests a violin, in using the volume knob to ramp up the signal. It’s a very elegant, mysterious tone paired with the glacial visual. I am interested in unorthodox guitar technique, and still passionately believe in the guitar as a relevant sonic tool in the contemporary overwhelm of digital tools.

This sonic combination also leads me to digress about Ennio Morricone’s work, in particular his score to ‘The Great Silence’, Sergio Corbucci’s unconventional 1968 western. Similarly centring the guitar as a primary instrument in many of his scores, Morricone sculpts a landscape from their versatile sound-generating properties. They are often core to the emotional expression and characterisation of the film and it’s environment.

A theme, or recurrence, I am becoming aware of, is my interest in soundtracks. Another minor connection, Klaus Kinski stars, madman lead of a number of Herzog films, including ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’, ‘Nosferatu the Vampyre’ and ‘Fitzcarraldo’, whose scores contain music by Popol Vuh.

The myth and sacrality of the mountain, as explored often in Herzog’s work, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount alluded to by Fricke in ‘Sei still, wisse ICH BIN’, is increasingly apparent as an influence on me. I recognise this elusive, ill-defined icon to be an important driving factor in my own creative work and artistic imagination. The landscape speaks, and we interpret.

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Bibliography:

Herzog, W. and Cronin, P. (2002) Herzog on Herzog: Conversations with Paul Cronin. London: Faber and Faber.

Red Bull Music Academy (2017) Werner Herzog on Krautrock, Silence and Music in Film|Red Bull Music Academy. 1 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFiVzWAWyaw&t=385s (Accessed: 25 May 2024)

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I came to realise that my final project work functions almost like cinema scoring. When I create work it is often, if not always strictly linearly or coherently, soundtracking an imagined scene; the environmental qualities and emotional colour they bring. Often looking to weather as a principle condition, a reflective, material mapping of a soundscape, perhaps illuminates my exploration of wind as a character, as I noted previously. I think this can help my issues with expectations of structure in the composition, getting away from unsuccessfully attempting to pry an unsuitable idea into my work and instead continuing to ‘soundtrack’ the imagined scene with honesty and intuition. Some ideas may require more involved engineering to actualise to a higher standard.

As a learning exercise we improvised sound to the listening scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film ‘The Conversation’. It was challenging to assemble a palette of sound generation tools in Ableton while Gareth kept which film we were scoring from us. I mapped the controller’s knobs to the envelope of Wavetable, feeling that the chief concern should be adaptability and versatility of tone and attack, so that I would be able to pivot between base modes of atmospheric washes and immediate, responsive tension.

The scene in question, despite being stripped of its defining context, was very fragile in my opinion. It concerned the delicacies of reading the facial performances of unheard actors, straining to hear deeply. Gene Hackman’s movements and interaction with his equipment belied a fastidious, routine-engrained understanding of its use. The more we improvised, the more I felt the urge to do less, remove any large gestures that would distract from the quiet intensity and highly specific editing choices already present in the silenced scene. Anything that screamed ‘me’ felt like a disservice. I believe very much in the power of highly frontal, manipulative and direct sound work in film, but my own sensibilities skew toward allowing the visual moment room to breathe. Few things pull me out of the presented world than over-scoring. To a certain extent, I feel that my takes improved as I began to read the scene just from how cogently its edit was cut. Rather than imposition, adapting to how its visual language could suggest an aural language. The brevity of the exercise somewhat denies any traditional notions of success, but I learned a great deal about how I perceive this symbiotic relationship between audio and the visual.

Some of the greatest sound design work in all cinema is found in the films of Jaques Tati, in particular his 1967 perfectionist masterpiece ‘Playtime’. At the beginning of the film, when we hear a bang in a busy airport terminal, we, like the characters we are independently following, search the wide frame to find the source: Our protagonist Hulot dropped his umbrella, entering the film. Stereophonic sound is orchestrated to tell stories, and jokes, in a way quite unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. Distant fragments bob in and out of transparency, wonderful small audio-visual systems that unfold and snowball in incredibly unassuming, background detail. As Michel Chion (2019, pp. 75-76) states, ‘surprise: like the flipside of the image, another film appears that we now see with only our ears… it was all there in the sound and at the same time it wasn’t. Now if we give Bergman back his sounds and Tati his images, everything returns to normal.’ In this way, the painstakingly assembled, almost subliminal soundscape redefines what the audience assumes to be inconsequential action in narrative film. Observe and listen deeply enough, and ‘Playtime’ will reveal new, transcendently genius moments of tiny subtlety endlessly.

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Bibliography:

Chion, M. (2019) Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press.

I had envisioned my piece to transition into a fully fledged black metal song, elevated by the preceding passages of analog synthesizer atmospherics and the suspended tension of the overdriven guitar chords. Despite my ambitions, I have continually struggled with the dynamics of the flow into this section. I assembled a series of familial chord groups, composed of layers in such as way as to be impossible for one guitarist alone to play. They were designed to be triggered by Ableton’s Simpler, and to seamlessly switch from chord to chord to create an overwhelming progression.

The guitars throughout the piece have been recorded with a Line 6 Pod XT, mostly modelling an 18 watt amp. I attempted to capture the same passages by mic’ing a higher wattage Marshall combo amp, but the recordings were far too noisy with interference to use. The Line 6 Pod provides a median between grit, versatility and immediacy. I chose this unit originally because I noted its appearances in Noisey’s ‘One Man Metal’ documentary series, used by Jef “Wrest” Whitehead of Leviathan and Scott “Malefic” Conner of Xasthur.

Further experimenting in Ableton, I resampled the previous guitar sample with a very short loop in order to make an organ-like pad. Despite being uncertain as to what its ultimate purpose could be, it was worthy exploration. Perhaps suitable as ending material.

I found that looking to reference tracks became helpful in assessing how to move forward with the composition. Mount Eerie’s ‘Waves’ from his 2012 album ‘Clear Moon’ is similarly bright in tremolo-picked guitar tone, yet the drums and wash of distorted cymbals provide a momentous shape to the piece. Much like Xasthur’s ‘The Prison of Mirrors’ from his 2006 album ‘Subliminal Genocide’, the layers and tone of the guitars resemble noise. In my own piece, I imagine the black metal sequence to be a negative mirror to the white and pink noise generators at the beginning, so dense it almost becomes a soft, if distorted white noise. In practice, however, I am reconsidering this. Balancing the weight and brittleness with the more rounded dynamic range of the first two minutes has proved to be something of a time sink. It has been extremely difficult to close in on a noise-like tone without it becoming shrill or painfully caustic.

Texturally, metal as a sphere is deeply engaging to me. There is a possibility for hugeness and the greatest intensity, while containing hypnotic granular detail. Not just because music is a large part of my sonic vocabulary, or because it could be used as shorthand for the genre’s long-aligned, dogmatic history of revisiting the same subject matter again and again, but because it speaks to me as a textural palette for exploring the natural elements. I’m interested in harnessing the genre’s topical clichés and re-interpreting them.

Moynihan and Søderlind (2009, pp. 386) noted the metaphysical, historical romance of black metal: ‘The eternal recurrence of certain leitmotifs, the dark blazing atmosphere, the obscure, viscous sonic landscape of many songs – often lasting more than ten minutes – have at times an almost psychedelic effect. In the heaviness and darkness of certain compositions it is possible to realize some subliminal melodies only after listening to these works several times. Black metal is a werewolf culture… black metal is Oskorei romanticism.’

Exploring the unique aural and emotive catharsis that can be found within the intersecting boundary zone of darkness and comfort. The night carries the scent of danger, but also of peace and beauty. I hope that I can imbue this same environmental, spiritual characteristic in my piece. I am reluctant to fully let go of the idea, a degree of overwhelming obscuration powerfully stimulates the imaginative space for both artist and listener. However, I have been struggling with the balance of having faith in pure sound and seeking to land an emotive reaction. I will have to further work on my piece, allowing it to tell me what it requires.

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Bibliography:

Mount Eerie (2012) ‘Waves’, Clear Moon [Digital]. Anacortes: P.W. Elverum & Sun.

Xasthur (2006) ‘The Prison of Mirrors’, Subliminal Genocide [Digital]. Alhambra: Hydra Head Records.

Moynihan, M. and Søderland, D. (2003) Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Second Edition. Los Angeles: Feral House.

I did it, I finally purchased Ableton. After an extensive period of experimenting and crucially learning, I decided that if I owned it, my own boundaries and preconceptions could be truly tested. Perhaps even bested.

I have been moving back and forth between Ableton Live 12 and Logic Pro, favouring Ableton for tracking and recording, and favouring Logic for mixing and dynamic attenuation. I wanted to add a dramatic element of alarm into my final piece, a consciously romantic application of the guitar, drawing on the earthy yet ethereal playing of Conny Veit on the latter half of Popol Vuh’s ‘Wehe Khorazin’. Using Logic initially, I recorded a minimal phrase of two power chords, separated by an octave.

In the contemporary, digitally exploratory field of sound arts, I still feel an innate connection to the guitar as a sonic object. It holds real gestural power, the ability for monstrous sound as well as the delicately beautiful.

Moving forward, I want to experiment with taking these sound files into Ableton’s Simpler and expanding the sonic capabilities of the electric guitar in a metal form. The way highly specific compositional choices can define the progression of a piece alongside the sonic, textural juxtaposition of the very organic instruments, and the very processed, manipulated sound sources is exciting to me.

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We toyed with Ableton’s synthesizers, Drift, Collision, Operator and Wavetable, creating sonic chaff that may be useful in our final compositions. Session view’s quick note-taking ability creates mental clutter, almost making hard decisions too easy. It does make possible an exciting spiral beyond intention, where I can trace how my ideas and working process evolve through Ableton’s toolset. I may feel listless, but as a fine artist first this is the closest thing to a digital comparison to reactively working into a painting. It is a far more organic process, when examined from an analogous standpoint.

I started with attempting to synthesise a dulcimer with Collision, resampling it into Simpler and slicing it. Using the keyboard and further resampling through Sampler, I created a fast moving chime pad, replete with glitches. Finally, I turned that chime sample into a Wavetable synth, which felt the most dynamic of all.

In finding an organic approach to sound creation, the glitch as technique is one I am personally wary of. It signposts the technological underpinning of the composition with clarity. Haela Ravenna Hunt Hendrix (2023) of avant-garde black metal band Liturgy states on her Substack that ‘general trembling abstracts the idea of tremolo further, partly by orchestrating tremolo for pitched percussion instruments and partly through digital skipping effects, and partly through shocking changes in style which create a stuttering glitches in subculture identification.’ I think her articulate way of explaining the way Liturgy see the digital, stuttering glitch as an ecstatic extension of the black metal tremolo picking technique is very coherently formulated and executed in the band’s music. It is so distinct to their sonic and ethical identity in my mind, that it would be foolish to replicate that unique meld. Functioning, as Hunt Hendrix posed, as a destabilisation of perceived subculture signifiers, more commonly expected and found in experimental electronic, rap or dance music genres. Where the longstanding guard of traditional black metal archetypes stay rooted in the boreal, Liturgy’s boundary-less exploration feels like staring at the sun.

Somewhere there must exist a balance between analog puritanism and Skynet. Achievable tatramajjhattā. In discussing and thinking about, and frankly agonising over, my perceptions surrounding technology’s role in my work, a quote I found by Mark Nunes (2011, pp. 43) detailed my concerns and hopes exactly: ‘In the condition where machinic systems seek the unforeseen and the emergent, there is also a possibility for the unforeseen error to slip into existence. This condition can be seen in the tradition of artists using the error, just as Munari used the wind, as a creative tool.’ The premise posed of human machination to enable a human-made machine output unintended results can be considered an extension of historical and surrounding art-making practices’ use of random or uncontrollable technique. Sensing a relation to my ontologically-investigative experiments with re-creating the aural character of wind, Bruno Munari’s ‘Useless Machines’ sculpture series depended on the kinetic intercession of wind itself; with the artist providing creative agency to the creation, a genuine bridge between the organic and the designed is formed. A bridge that I want to, if not fully cross, venture out onto in good faith, despite my own preconceptions about the chasm below.

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Bibliography:

Hunt-Hendrix, H. (2023) ‘Towards a New Philosophy of Music’, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, 10 September. Available at: https://litvrgy.substack.com/p/towards-a-new-philosophy-of-music?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2 (Accessed: 7 May 2023)

Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (2023) Djennaration. 23 March 2023. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENp5Ly8C5MM (Accessed: 7 May 2023)

Nunes, M. (2011) Error: Glitch, Noise and Jam in New Media Cultures. New York, London: The Continuum International Publishing Group.