Eat Yr Hrt out, Scott Walker

Fellini's Casanova (1976)



Pola X - Leos Carax (1999)

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

I must admit to only really giving Oneohtrix Point Never any sort of attention because of this

The fact that Daniel Lopatin could take such a ridiculously maligned fragment of music and honestly and completely unironically tease such immeasurable beauty out of it indicated to me a sonic alchemy: The ability to turn shit into gold or at the very least, to successfully polish a turd.

His use of pitch shifting, speed control and looping of short samples, while not new techniques were employed in such a way so as to forge a new path of psychedelic discovery as if parallel plateaus from the recent pasts were accessible when the grain or texture of these signifiers became more apparent.

The analogue synth, arpeggio dominated work from his official releases of Drifts and Returnal tended to paint in broader strokes, carving out infinite vistas, with the latter indicating the beginnings of a more digital world.

While his work with Joel Ford in both Games and Ford & Lopatin has placed some of these 80’s fetishist constructs into a more pop song context with varying successes sometimes erring on the side of self-parody, Replica, at least on the surface, appears to offer a best-of-both-worlds: That of the OPN rigorous compositional ear and synth drone and the echo jams of corporate identity as mantra.

Things start off as business as usual with Andro - the type of OPN track that shares some similarity with a certain type of Boards of Canada vignette – mostly due to the presence of similar analogue hardware. But while BOC are more likely to invoke a hash warmed feeling of head nodding familiarity Lopatin is always aimed directly at the heart of the sun towards wide-eyed wonder.

Only by the third track, Sleep Dealer are his intentions made clear as he imagines a new kind of steampunk where certain technologies have effectively stagnated alongside others accelerating onwards. A nanobot swarm awakens, each with their own archaic operating system boot-up chimes, forming a perfect segue into the digital Balinese monkey chant of Remember which in turn perfectly sets up the stately piano of the title track and 1st side closer. Piano should not be too much of a foreign instrument in the OPN universe after being employed with devastating effect on the reworking of Returnal’s title track in collaboration with Antony Hegarty. It is equally affecting here, together with some beautifully complex synth articulations and modulations, like some mechanistic search for sentience.

Deliberate or not, the rather chilling similarities of the album cover with a rather more famous Escher self-portrait and therefore, by association, to the work of Douglas Hofstadter, do no disservice to this album’s vision.

Naussau takes things in a rather pointillist direction verging on the annoying where Lopatin takes a rather incongruous collection of samples and forces them to submit to his composition's internal logic, or is that the listener who is being forced? There are some interesting similarities with some of the work of Books, Nuno Canavarro, Robert Ashley as well as the musique concrete hip-hop of El-P.

Submersible revisits more classic territory and then both Up and Child Soldier initially jar with their aggressive cut-and-paste assaults. The latter being marginally more successful in that it molds its beauty out of its own established internal logic rather than somewhat apologetically retracting its initial statements in favour of more serene sounds. Vocal “ah’s” and clipped phonemes over more familiar synth drone terrain of closer Explain round off this series of tracks that should be regarded as a triumph and indication that Lopatin appears far from exhausting his sonic palette or ideas.

Possible Worlds - Microcosm / Macrocosm

The Tenant

Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976) is equal parts hilarious and terrifying. It tells the story of a new tenant (played by Polanski himself) in an apartment previously occupied by a woman who has recently committed suicide. It soon becomes apparent to the man that the other lodgers (as well as the physical building itself) are conspiring to drive him insane and towards suicide, as they had done to the previous tenant.

Not only does it bare a strong resemblance to Polanski's own Rosemary's Baby but also Abel Ferrara's (who also cast himself in the lead) Driller Killer. Perhaps the biggest debt is owed to it by David Lynch, who's Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive show strong traces of The Tenant in their DNA.

Phillippe Sarde's perfectly adequate soundtrack went straight through me upon first listen. It wasn't until it made an appearance later, albeit in reworked fashion that it really caught my ear.

What is essentially a fairly smooth jazz pop-rock reworking of the main theme opens the composition up beautifully - deemphasising the orchestral density but maintaining the harmonic complexity, the spartan drums given a perfect rush from subtle dub effects - all in service of a serene yet  unsteady, and uncertain minimalism. Perhaps a foreshadowing of some of Radioheads (amongst others) later works - where both jazz and orchestral  concepts compete within a rock idiom?

A Body Double

I had a lot of fun watching Brian De Palma's Body Double the other night. It serves as very nice companion piece to his 1981 film Blow Out. (which itself nods knowingly at Antionini's Blow Up amongst other films) Both serve as a love letter of sorts to the very mechanics of film and film making. Whereas Blow Out explores the medium of sound and sound recording as it pertains to the moving picture, Body Double focusses on the jobbing actors, extras and stand-ins working within the B-grade or horror movie genres, while successfully and comfortably occupying both categories itself.

A suitably sleazy soundtrack is provided by Pino Donaggio (A De Palma regular). Its synth arpeggiations, ambient keyboards, airy vocals and reverbed vibroslaps perfectly accompany the seduction and voyeurism taking place on the screen.

What is particularly stiking is its similarity to Felt Mountain era Goldfrapp and how wonderfully these sounds were repurposed by Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp to soundtrack their unique alpine wonderland.

Letters II

To his parents

Rome, 24 June 1831

... I went to Tivoli last Saturday, at two in the afternoon, in the middle of the dusty heat. There were two of us. We got three quarters of the way there but then felt exhausted and hailed a passing carriage. It's fifteen miles from Rome to Tivoli. we arrived at half past eight, and the next morning got up at four and went staight off exploring. I've never seen anything so exquisite: the waterfalls, clouds of powdery spray, the smoking clefts, the fresh cool river, the cave, the innumeral rainbows, the olive groves, the hills, the country houses, the village - the whole thing is enchanting and unique. The people there are very handsome, but they beg even more than they do in Rome; only, their begging hasn't the unpleasantly debased quality of the Romans'. They do it quite brazenly - they name the sum they want and laugh as they do so, as if it were a joke between you. Some young men and women aged between twenty and thirty, who were harvesting and saw us go past, shouted out: "Hey, sir come on, give us half a paolo (five sous), baiocco (one sou), what's it to you?" ...

The evening before last, I felt some emotion for the first time in our convent. There were four or five of us sitting in the moonlight round the fountain on the little staircase which leads to the garden. We drew lots for who would fetch my guitar, and as the audience consisted of the few fellow-students whose company I can bear, I did not need any pressing. As I was beginning an aria from Iphigeneia in Tauris, M. Carle Vernet appeared. After a couple of minutes he began to weep and sob out loud, then he fled into his son's drawing room, crying out in a choked voice: "Horace, come here!" "What is it, what is it?" "We're all in tears". "Why, why, what's happend?" "M. Berloiz us some Gluck. Oh, how right you are (turning to me), it's overwhelming. You know, you're a melancholy man, I understand you, I do, there are people who -". He couldn't finish. But no one laughed. The fact is we were all moved. I was in the mood, it was night, I felt quite free from anxiety beneath that resonant porch, and I let myself go as if I had been alone...

Hector Berlioz

A Selection of his Letters

Selected, editted and translated by Humphrey Searle

Gollancz

1966

Théorie du signal et transmission de l'information

All images:


Vibrations and Waves
AP French
Chapman and Hall
1971