artist: VARIOUS ARTISTS
title: Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue
catalog number: and/36
release year: 2010
format: CD x 2
status: available
title: Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue
catalog number: and/36
release year: 2010
format: CD x 2
status: available
The third and perhaps final project in the film director series which began with
"Andrei Tarkovsky - Another Kind Of Language" and "Yasujiro Ozu -
Hitokomakura". "Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue" focuses upon
the Italian auteur's landmark "tetralogy" of films L'Avventura (1960), La Notte
(1961), L'Eclisse (1962) and Il Deserto Rosso (1963).
Antonioni was known for not being very keen to use music in his films, partially
because he wanted the films to tell their stories free from "additional gloss".
Therefore music was sparsely used - if at all. Antonioni considered the natural
sounds or "background noises" of a film to be of enormous importance, and
considered them to be the "true music" of a film. Obviously Antonioni's view
resonates with and/OAR since environmental sound has always been it's main
focus, and is one of the reasons why he was chosen for this project over other film
directors. Composer Giovanni Fusco, whose music is (more or less) featured in
most of Antonioni's films from the late 1950s to the early '60s said, "the first rule for
any musician who intends to collaborate with Antonioni, is to forget that he is a
musician!"
Yet, there is another composer who Antonioni worked with, that this project seeks
to acknowledge and pay subtle homage to in addition to the director himself;
because if it were not for his inspirational and pioneering minimal electronic
music featured in "Deserto Rosso", this project might not have come together at
all: Vittorio Gelmetti. Gelmetti's electronic work consistently came to mind during
the planning stages of this project, and his influence can indeed be heard
throughout this release.
CD 1
01. TYLER WILCOX & COREY FULLER 7:05
02. OLIVIA BLOCK & ADAM SONDERBERG 6:37
03. MARC BEHRENS 6:24
04. ROEL MEELKOP 6:06
05. ADAM SONDERBERG 2:14
06. J. WINSTON PHILLIPS 6:17
07. ANTTI RANNISTO 3:40
08. BEN OWEN 6:32
09. LAWRENCE ENGLISH 5:08
10. ASHER 6:30
11. PALI MEURSAULT (with Ici-Même) 6:36
12. EKG (Kyle Bruckmann & Ernst Karel) 7:46
CD 2
01. DALE LLOYD 1:27
02. JUAN JOSÉ CALARCO 4:51
03. RICHARD GARET 6:57
04. ALAN COURTIS 4:13
05. LUIGI TURRA 6:11
06. I8U 6:17
07. STEINBRÜCHEL 6:54
08. GABRIEL PAIUK 6:52
09. JASON KAHN 5:33
10. FHIEVEL 6:02
11. TOMAS PHILLIPS 7:07
12. MARIHIKO HARA 4:04
TOTAL TIME: 2 hours, 17 minutes and 12 seconds.
"Andrei Tarkovsky - Another Kind Of Language" and "Yasujiro Ozu -
Hitokomakura". "Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue" focuses upon
the Italian auteur's landmark "tetralogy" of films L'Avventura (1960), La Notte
(1961), L'Eclisse (1962) and Il Deserto Rosso (1963).
Antonioni was known for not being very keen to use music in his films, partially
because he wanted the films to tell their stories free from "additional gloss".
Therefore music was sparsely used - if at all. Antonioni considered the natural
sounds or "background noises" of a film to be of enormous importance, and
considered them to be the "true music" of a film. Obviously Antonioni's view
resonates with and/OAR since environmental sound has always been it's main
focus, and is one of the reasons why he was chosen for this project over other film
directors. Composer Giovanni Fusco, whose music is (more or less) featured in
most of Antonioni's films from the late 1950s to the early '60s said, "the first rule for
any musician who intends to collaborate with Antonioni, is to forget that he is a
musician!"
Yet, there is another composer who Antonioni worked with, that this project seeks
to acknowledge and pay subtle homage to in addition to the director himself;
because if it were not for his inspirational and pioneering minimal electronic
music featured in "Deserto Rosso", this project might not have come together at
all: Vittorio Gelmetti. Gelmetti's electronic work consistently came to mind during
the planning stages of this project, and his influence can indeed be heard
throughout this release.
CD 1
01. TYLER WILCOX & COREY FULLER 7:05
02. OLIVIA BLOCK & ADAM SONDERBERG 6:37
03. MARC BEHRENS 6:24
04. ROEL MEELKOP 6:06
05. ADAM SONDERBERG 2:14
06. J. WINSTON PHILLIPS 6:17
07. ANTTI RANNISTO 3:40
08. BEN OWEN 6:32
09. LAWRENCE ENGLISH 5:08
10. ASHER 6:30
11. PALI MEURSAULT (with Ici-Même) 6:36
12. EKG (Kyle Bruckmann & Ernst Karel) 7:46
CD 2
01. DALE LLOYD 1:27
02. JUAN JOSÉ CALARCO 4:51
03. RICHARD GARET 6:57
04. ALAN COURTIS 4:13
05. LUIGI TURRA 6:11
06. I8U 6:17
07. STEINBRÜCHEL 6:54
08. GABRIEL PAIUK 6:52
09. JASON KAHN 5:33
10. FHIEVEL 6:02
11. TOMAS PHILLIPS 7:07
12. MARIHIKO HARA 4:04
TOTAL TIME: 2 hours, 17 minutes and 12 seconds.
JUST OUTSIDE (MARCH 2011)
A nice idea and an impressive cast assembled for this two-disc set. Music inspired
by l'Avventura, La Notte, l'Eclisse and Deserto Rosso, arguably the strongest
section of the director's oeuvre with musicians including Olivia Block, Roel
Meelkop, Ben Owen, Lawrence English, Asher, Richard Garet, Gabriel Paiuk,
Jason Kahn and many more, 24 tracks in all, some 136 minutes of sound.
I'm generalizing, but I do feel that the pieces coalesce around a similar
sensibility, one that's fittingly appropriate to the Antonioni of this period: a certain
bleakness, a sense of isolation, yet a fascination with textures that are often, in a
post-industrial way, beautiful. In fact, I thought many of the pieces could serve as
quite able soundtracks for that last, amazing shot in "l'Eclisse", tracking toward the
streetlight, replacing the piano in the film. The sounds tend to involve held tones,
in layers, sparse and dry, with the odd filigree spinning out like a steel shaving
(there are exceptions, of course).
It's also a remarkably consistent collection. I really didn't find a single track out of
24 to lack some value. By the same token, only a couple struck me as
extraordinary in any way, those being the pieces (all tracks are untitled) by Asher
and EKG. Other fine contributions are heard from Olivia Block and Adam
Sonderberg, Gabriel Paiuk and Jason Kahn. I'm not sure this is a criticism, but the
uniformity of quality of the pieces and their Antonionian (!) air sometimes caused
them, in my mind, to blend together a bit. I'm not sure that part of me might have
preferred a single disc. That's a quibble, though.
Oddly enough, I also found myself thinking that you could do worse than this set
insofar as introducing curious but naive friends to this area of music. The work is
certainly solid and rich enough to hold the attention of the innocent, inquisitive
listener. (Brian Olewnick)
A nice idea and an impressive cast assembled for this two-disc set. Music inspired
by l'Avventura, La Notte, l'Eclisse and Deserto Rosso, arguably the strongest
section of the director's oeuvre with musicians including Olivia Block, Roel
Meelkop, Ben Owen, Lawrence English, Asher, Richard Garet, Gabriel Paiuk,
Jason Kahn and many more, 24 tracks in all, some 136 minutes of sound.
I'm generalizing, but I do feel that the pieces coalesce around a similar
sensibility, one that's fittingly appropriate to the Antonioni of this period: a certain
bleakness, a sense of isolation, yet a fascination with textures that are often, in a
post-industrial way, beautiful. In fact, I thought many of the pieces could serve as
quite able soundtracks for that last, amazing shot in "l'Eclisse", tracking toward the
streetlight, replacing the piano in the film. The sounds tend to involve held tones,
in layers, sparse and dry, with the odd filigree spinning out like a steel shaving
(there are exceptions, of course).
It's also a remarkably consistent collection. I really didn't find a single track out of
24 to lack some value. By the same token, only a couple struck me as
extraordinary in any way, those being the pieces (all tracks are untitled) by Asher
and EKG. Other fine contributions are heard from Olivia Block and Adam
Sonderberg, Gabriel Paiuk and Jason Kahn. I'm not sure this is a criticism, but the
uniformity of quality of the pieces and their Antonionian (!) air sometimes caused
them, in my mind, to blend together a bit. I'm not sure that part of me might have
preferred a single disc. That's a quibble, though.
Oddly enough, I also found myself thinking that you could do worse than this set
insofar as introducing curious but naive friends to this area of music. The work is
certainly solid and rich enough to hold the attention of the innocent, inquisitive
listener. (Brian Olewnick)
TEXTURA (APRIL 2011)
Michelangelo Antonioni's filmography offers such a rich source of imagery and
themes it's a wonder no experimental music project has appeared until now based
upon it. All credit goes to and/OAR then, for choosing the Italian auteur as the
third in its film director series (previous volumes honoured Andrei Tarkovsky and
Yasujiro Ozu), with the two-disc set, formally titled Michelangelo Antonioni -
Trilogy and Epilogue, focusing on L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse
(1962), and Deserto Rosso (1963). Antonioni is, of course, the master of ennui and
alienation whose works are populated by wandering souls who either vanish
altogether (L'Avventura) or co-exist but with the littlest of connection to one
another. Not surprisingly, he preferred that his films be generally unencumbered
by music's presence, believing that his stories would breathe better without such
interference; in that regard, Giovanni Fusco, whose music appears in most of
Antonioni's films from the late 1950s to the early ‘60s, apparently declared, “The
first rule for any musician who intends to collaborate with Antonioni, is to forget
that he is a musician!”
A few other background details are worth noting before turning to the contents of
the release itself, specifically Antonioni's sensitivity to the importance of natural
sounds—what he regarded as the “true music” of a film—and the pioneering
electronic music that Vittorio Gelmetti contributed to Deserto Rosso. Such
dimensions of the director's work draw a clear line connecting the artists featured
on and/OAR's recording, all of whom in one way or another share like-minded
sensitivities to environmental sound and to the role of electronics in current music-
making practices. The set features over two hours of lower-case, electro-acoustic
works peppered with the kinds of pregnant pauses and empty spaces that
characterize Antonioni's films. Some of the pieces (all untitled) are heavily
electronic in nature (Marc Behrens' turbulent setting, Antti Rannisto's throbbing
drone), while others inhabit an interzone where acoustic instruments (clarinet,
cello), natural sounds (industrial creaks, cavernous rumbling), and electronic
manipulations reside. The artists involved will be familiar to those conversant with
the microsound genre, with figures such as Roel Meelkop, Ben Owen, i8u,
Lawrence English, Steinbrüchel, Jason Kahn, and Tomas Phillips taking part. The
piece by Pali Meursault (with Ici-Même) stands out as one of the settings that is
most rich in outdoor sounds, with train clatter, traffic noise, and bird sounds
threading their way into the mix. Richard Garet's sub-lunar exploration sounds like
the essence of La Notte and L'Eclisse distilled down to a seven-minute form. Dale
Lloyd's brief piano rumination arrives as a breath of fresh air amidst such
abstractions, as does Marihiko Hara's at album's close.
The package for the release includes two quotes taken from Seymour Chatman's
1985 book Antonioni: Or, the Surface of the World, one of which in particular
merits inclusion here for the clarity it brings to the director's approach: “Antonioni
asks us to take a slow, steady look at the world around us, to forget our ordinary
preoccupations, and to contemplate that which lies slightly athwart them.”
Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy and Epilogue accomplishes much the same
thing, albeit in its own unique fashion.
Michelangelo Antonioni's filmography offers such a rich source of imagery and
themes it's a wonder no experimental music project has appeared until now based
upon it. All credit goes to and/OAR then, for choosing the Italian auteur as the
third in its film director series (previous volumes honoured Andrei Tarkovsky and
Yasujiro Ozu), with the two-disc set, formally titled Michelangelo Antonioni -
Trilogy and Epilogue, focusing on L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse
(1962), and Deserto Rosso (1963). Antonioni is, of course, the master of ennui and
alienation whose works are populated by wandering souls who either vanish
altogether (L'Avventura) or co-exist but with the littlest of connection to one
another. Not surprisingly, he preferred that his films be generally unencumbered
by music's presence, believing that his stories would breathe better without such
interference; in that regard, Giovanni Fusco, whose music appears in most of
Antonioni's films from the late 1950s to the early ‘60s, apparently declared, “The
first rule for any musician who intends to collaborate with Antonioni, is to forget
that he is a musician!”
A few other background details are worth noting before turning to the contents of
the release itself, specifically Antonioni's sensitivity to the importance of natural
sounds—what he regarded as the “true music” of a film—and the pioneering
electronic music that Vittorio Gelmetti contributed to Deserto Rosso. Such
dimensions of the director's work draw a clear line connecting the artists featured
on and/OAR's recording, all of whom in one way or another share like-minded
sensitivities to environmental sound and to the role of electronics in current music-
making practices. The set features over two hours of lower-case, electro-acoustic
works peppered with the kinds of pregnant pauses and empty spaces that
characterize Antonioni's films. Some of the pieces (all untitled) are heavily
electronic in nature (Marc Behrens' turbulent setting, Antti Rannisto's throbbing
drone), while others inhabit an interzone where acoustic instruments (clarinet,
cello), natural sounds (industrial creaks, cavernous rumbling), and electronic
manipulations reside. The artists involved will be familiar to those conversant with
the microsound genre, with figures such as Roel Meelkop, Ben Owen, i8u,
Lawrence English, Steinbrüchel, Jason Kahn, and Tomas Phillips taking part. The
piece by Pali Meursault (with Ici-Même) stands out as one of the settings that is
most rich in outdoor sounds, with train clatter, traffic noise, and bird sounds
threading their way into the mix. Richard Garet's sub-lunar exploration sounds like
the essence of La Notte and L'Eclisse distilled down to a seven-minute form. Dale
Lloyd's brief piano rumination arrives as a breath of fresh air amidst such
abstractions, as does Marihiko Hara's at album's close.
The package for the release includes two quotes taken from Seymour Chatman's
1985 book Antonioni: Or, the Surface of the World, one of which in particular
merits inclusion here for the clarity it brings to the director's approach: “Antonioni
asks us to take a slow, steady look at the world around us, to forget our ordinary
preoccupations, and to contemplate that which lies slightly athwart them.”
Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy and Epilogue accomplishes much the same
thing, albeit in its own unique fashion.
THE WIRE (JUNE 2011)
"I am personally very reluctant to use music in my films, for the simple reason that
I prefer to work in a dry manner, to say things with the least means possible," said
Michelangelo Antonioni in 1961, the same period in which he shot the films
L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse and Il Deserto Rosso. So it's appropriate that this
collection of 24 homages to those films, following two previous and/OAR
collections dedicated to Ozu and Tarkovsky, contains few obviously 'musical'
elements: Dale Lloyd and Marihiko Hara both feature tentative pianos, and Kyle
Bruckmann plays cor anglais on EKG's fine track, but otherwise we're in a world of
vast spaces, ambiguous soundscapes, changing weather and glowing noise.
Atmospheric works by Juan Jose Calarco and Richard Garet could easily be
soundtracks in their own right. i8u (aka Montreal's France Jobin) is hyper-minimal,
shifting curtains of colour just barely there. Asher has possibly buried a string
orchestra in his back yard, while Tomas Phillips melds chiming bells with intakes
of breath (lifted from an Antonioni soundtrack?). Also excellent are Olivia Block
with Adam Sonderberg, and Pali Meursault's filmic concrète, a dream of trains
with squeaky window hinges. All these tracks are consistent with one another,
meaning the collection works surprisingly well as a straight-through listen.
and/OAR's Ozu homage came accompanied by an online booklet of photos and
track info, but here the link between music and films is never discussed, which
suits Antonioni fine. Stuck in our memories, his images become the music's
context. Its ambiguity fits them like a glove: Monica Vitti's bleak couplings, those
urban landscapes where something or someone is missing. (Clive Bell)
"I am personally very reluctant to use music in my films, for the simple reason that
I prefer to work in a dry manner, to say things with the least means possible," said
Michelangelo Antonioni in 1961, the same period in which he shot the films
L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse and Il Deserto Rosso. So it's appropriate that this
collection of 24 homages to those films, following two previous and/OAR
collections dedicated to Ozu and Tarkovsky, contains few obviously 'musical'
elements: Dale Lloyd and Marihiko Hara both feature tentative pianos, and Kyle
Bruckmann plays cor anglais on EKG's fine track, but otherwise we're in a world of
vast spaces, ambiguous soundscapes, changing weather and glowing noise.
Atmospheric works by Juan Jose Calarco and Richard Garet could easily be
soundtracks in their own right. i8u (aka Montreal's France Jobin) is hyper-minimal,
shifting curtains of colour just barely there. Asher has possibly buried a string
orchestra in his back yard, while Tomas Phillips melds chiming bells with intakes
of breath (lifted from an Antonioni soundtrack?). Also excellent are Olivia Block
with Adam Sonderberg, and Pali Meursault's filmic concrète, a dream of trains
with squeaky window hinges. All these tracks are consistent with one another,
meaning the collection works surprisingly well as a straight-through listen.
and/OAR's Ozu homage came accompanied by an online booklet of photos and
track info, but here the link between music and films is never discussed, which
suits Antonioni fine. Stuck in our memories, his images become the music's
context. Its ambiguity fits them like a glove: Monica Vitti's bleak couplings, those
urban landscapes where something or someone is missing. (Clive Bell)
THE WATCHFUL EAR (MAY 2011)
Tonight I have finally got around to writing up a two disc set I’ve had playing here
for a couple of weeks, a compilation named Michelangelo Antonioni – Trilogy
and Epilogue released on the and/OAR label.
Now, I am probably one of the least qualified people to write about this album.
The two discs contain twenty-four tracks by a host of musicians that, on the whole I
know the music of relatively well. That’s the easy bit. They are however making
music here that is in some way inspired by four films by Antonioni, and I have
never seen a film by Antonioni. Before anyone comments below to tell me what I’
m missing, I know, I know…. I just prefer to keep film out of my life. I’m very aware
that if I spent some time investigating the genre, I may be lost in it for ever, so its
easier to just remain ignorant. This doesn’t help me much though when a set like
this appears. All I can really do is talk about the music in itself. I’be no idea how
well any of this music responds to the film work.
As there are twenty-four separate tracks here, twelve on each disc, and given that I
do want to get to bed tonight rather than tomorrow morning, I’m going to have to
pick out my favourite tracks rather than try and say something about all of them.
The list of names here is impressive however, with each track by a different
musician, with twenty-one of the pieces solo works and three duos, and only Adam
Sonderberg appearing twice, once on his own and once in duo with Olivia Block.
On the first disc it is indeed Sonderberg and Block that provide the first real stand-
out track. A mix of electronic tones, a reed instrument (maybe an oboe?) perhaps
some percussion and definitely some field recordings, in particular some
beautifully recorded rain showers comes together in a very lovely manner, perhaps
not that originally, but certainly with great craft and no small amount of beauty.
Marc Behrens also offers a great six minute track, a dramatic set of mini explosions
that sounds like water or something pouring onto some kind of thin metal sheet,
then processed and warped into very sudden, unnerving events. I may have got
this entirely wrong, but that’s what it sounds like to me, and its a great little piece,
full interestingly different sounds but with the mark of digital processing stamped
over them here and there.
Sonderberg’s solo offer is a fraction over two minutes in length and consists of tiny
digitally disrupted fragments of speech, all of it completely incomprehensible and
barely resembling the human voice at all, with each little part submerged in a
field of empty silence otherwise. Ben Owen offers six minutes of slowly evolving
drone peppered by what sounds like contact miked wire fences and a trickling
stream but probably isn’t. The track is full of detail, voices emerge at one point,
footsteps at another, with a continual slightly oppressive hum hanging behind all
of it, its presence never forgotten. Asher’s quietly simmering cracks and pops also
work very well, with more footsteps, this time alone, softly trodden and thoroughly
cinematic, yet all kept within Asher’s familiar grey, nostalgic style and never rising
in volume or energy levels. EKG, the duo of Ernst Karel and Kyle Bruckmann vie
with Block and Sonderberg for the first disc’s stand out piece though, a hauntingly
morose, brooding piece in which Bruckmann’s oboe wanders in a forlorn, lonely
manner around little sections of electronic hum and chatter, never breaking out
into anything dramatic, but still filled with plenty of aural imagery. Listen with your
eyes…
Disc two opens with a brief piano (though it might be an electronic keyboard)
piece by and/OAR label boss Dale Lloyd that starts a little busy but slips into a tiny
vignette that fits somewhere between early Feldman and Satie, a nice way to
open the disc. A couple of tracks later, Richard Garet’s barely audible blend of
grey hum, more rain sodden streets and deadened piano chimes is very beautiful
in kind of isolationist, cloudily empty ambient manner. His piece is very beautiful,
maybe slightly familiar but hard to resist for its simple beauty all the same. Alan
Courtis, one of several South Americans here on a set that otherwise has a strong
North American feel, then gives us a piece that makes Garet’s sound thoroughly
energetic. The thinnest of sinetones follows the slightest of barely registering bleak
distortion. This piece is right up my street, very focused, simple and direct, but
very very quiet and bleak in atmosphere. Lovely, if not exactly uplifting stuff.
The second disc has several tracks of a similarly empty nature. Luigi Turra’s
contribution sees small metallic sounds caught in a resonant room matched with
more present, sampled sounds, but again the sensation is one of calm, deathly
slow near silence. Neither i8u or Steinbrüchel exactly raise the roof either, but
their sound, complete with a more digital edge doesn’t quite match the delicacy
of Courtis or Garet’s tracks. Gabriel Paiuk, an Argentinian musician best known as
an improvising pianist then provides another thoroughly calm, evocative work,
maybe a mix of instrumental and environmentally recorded sounds, maybe not,
but again so much of the piece is reduced to near silent, colourless abstraction
that the source material seems completely irrelevant. Jason Kahn’s percussion and
electronics based drone track is as perfectly good an example of this area of his
work as a six minute window might allow, and the album’s closing piece by a
name I think unknown to me Marihiko Hara is another slightly processed piano
track, the little jaunty grabs of the instrument sampled, cut up, moved about and
mixed with hisses and a hint of more field recordings to end the disc nicely and
with a suitable counterpart to the discs’s opening track.
I don’t know the films of Antonioni, but listening to this music I picture bleak,
melancholic images, possibly black and white (as there is little colour in this
collection of music) and with a very slow sense of progression. Assuming each of
the musicians was separately asked to produce something for the compilation it is
notable how similarly themed much of the music is, and so I sense that the film
maker must have had a very well known trademark style and that a feeling of
beautiful and yet maybe tragic sadness flowed through his work. Irrelevant of my
understanding of this music’s greater meanings, I found Triology and Epilogue to
be a very enjoyable couple of discs, great music to play late at night, even better
if, as is the case here tonight, rain can be heard pattering outside the open
window as the CDs play. Very beautiful then. Now, somebody tell me Antonioni
made hectic martial arts films? (Richard Pinnell)
Tonight I have finally got around to writing up a two disc set I’ve had playing here
for a couple of weeks, a compilation named Michelangelo Antonioni – Trilogy
and Epilogue released on the and/OAR label.
Now, I am probably one of the least qualified people to write about this album.
The two discs contain twenty-four tracks by a host of musicians that, on the whole I
know the music of relatively well. That’s the easy bit. They are however making
music here that is in some way inspired by four films by Antonioni, and I have
never seen a film by Antonioni. Before anyone comments below to tell me what I’
m missing, I know, I know…. I just prefer to keep film out of my life. I’m very aware
that if I spent some time investigating the genre, I may be lost in it for ever, so its
easier to just remain ignorant. This doesn’t help me much though when a set like
this appears. All I can really do is talk about the music in itself. I’be no idea how
well any of this music responds to the film work.
As there are twenty-four separate tracks here, twelve on each disc, and given that I
do want to get to bed tonight rather than tomorrow morning, I’m going to have to
pick out my favourite tracks rather than try and say something about all of them.
The list of names here is impressive however, with each track by a different
musician, with twenty-one of the pieces solo works and three duos, and only Adam
Sonderberg appearing twice, once on his own and once in duo with Olivia Block.
On the first disc it is indeed Sonderberg and Block that provide the first real stand-
out track. A mix of electronic tones, a reed instrument (maybe an oboe?) perhaps
some percussion and definitely some field recordings, in particular some
beautifully recorded rain showers comes together in a very lovely manner, perhaps
not that originally, but certainly with great craft and no small amount of beauty.
Marc Behrens also offers a great six minute track, a dramatic set of mini explosions
that sounds like water or something pouring onto some kind of thin metal sheet,
then processed and warped into very sudden, unnerving events. I may have got
this entirely wrong, but that’s what it sounds like to me, and its a great little piece,
full interestingly different sounds but with the mark of digital processing stamped
over them here and there.
Sonderberg’s solo offer is a fraction over two minutes in length and consists of tiny
digitally disrupted fragments of speech, all of it completely incomprehensible and
barely resembling the human voice at all, with each little part submerged in a
field of empty silence otherwise. Ben Owen offers six minutes of slowly evolving
drone peppered by what sounds like contact miked wire fences and a trickling
stream but probably isn’t. The track is full of detail, voices emerge at one point,
footsteps at another, with a continual slightly oppressive hum hanging behind all
of it, its presence never forgotten. Asher’s quietly simmering cracks and pops also
work very well, with more footsteps, this time alone, softly trodden and thoroughly
cinematic, yet all kept within Asher’s familiar grey, nostalgic style and never rising
in volume or energy levels. EKG, the duo of Ernst Karel and Kyle Bruckmann vie
with Block and Sonderberg for the first disc’s stand out piece though, a hauntingly
morose, brooding piece in which Bruckmann’s oboe wanders in a forlorn, lonely
manner around little sections of electronic hum and chatter, never breaking out
into anything dramatic, but still filled with plenty of aural imagery. Listen with your
eyes…
Disc two opens with a brief piano (though it might be an electronic keyboard)
piece by and/OAR label boss Dale Lloyd that starts a little busy but slips into a tiny
vignette that fits somewhere between early Feldman and Satie, a nice way to
open the disc. A couple of tracks later, Richard Garet’s barely audible blend of
grey hum, more rain sodden streets and deadened piano chimes is very beautiful
in kind of isolationist, cloudily empty ambient manner. His piece is very beautiful,
maybe slightly familiar but hard to resist for its simple beauty all the same. Alan
Courtis, one of several South Americans here on a set that otherwise has a strong
North American feel, then gives us a piece that makes Garet’s sound thoroughly
energetic. The thinnest of sinetones follows the slightest of barely registering bleak
distortion. This piece is right up my street, very focused, simple and direct, but
very very quiet and bleak in atmosphere. Lovely, if not exactly uplifting stuff.
The second disc has several tracks of a similarly empty nature. Luigi Turra’s
contribution sees small metallic sounds caught in a resonant room matched with
more present, sampled sounds, but again the sensation is one of calm, deathly
slow near silence. Neither i8u or Steinbrüchel exactly raise the roof either, but
their sound, complete with a more digital edge doesn’t quite match the delicacy
of Courtis or Garet’s tracks. Gabriel Paiuk, an Argentinian musician best known as
an improvising pianist then provides another thoroughly calm, evocative work,
maybe a mix of instrumental and environmentally recorded sounds, maybe not,
but again so much of the piece is reduced to near silent, colourless abstraction
that the source material seems completely irrelevant. Jason Kahn’s percussion and
electronics based drone track is as perfectly good an example of this area of his
work as a six minute window might allow, and the album’s closing piece by a
name I think unknown to me Marihiko Hara is another slightly processed piano
track, the little jaunty grabs of the instrument sampled, cut up, moved about and
mixed with hisses and a hint of more field recordings to end the disc nicely and
with a suitable counterpart to the discs’s opening track.
I don’t know the films of Antonioni, but listening to this music I picture bleak,
melancholic images, possibly black and white (as there is little colour in this
collection of music) and with a very slow sense of progression. Assuming each of
the musicians was separately asked to produce something for the compilation it is
notable how similarly themed much of the music is, and so I sense that the film
maker must have had a very well known trademark style and that a feeling of
beautiful and yet maybe tragic sadness flowed through his work. Irrelevant of my
understanding of this music’s greater meanings, I found Triology and Epilogue to
be a very enjoyable couple of discs, great music to play late at night, even better
if, as is the case here tonight, rain can be heard pattering outside the open
window as the CDs play. Very beautiful then. Now, somebody tell me Antonioni
made hectic martial arts films? (Richard Pinnell)
FOUTER & SWICK (APRIL 2011)
* Note:To read the review with a suggested reading list, visit here.
This wonderful double CD sent to me by and/OAR’s Dale Lloyd is a collector’s
item. Anyone interested in film, film music and sound, or simply wishing to explore
the work of a range of excellent artists should have this album in their collection.
The concept behind the album was to invite selected sound artists to consider a
series of basic guidelines in responding to four of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films:
L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L’Eclisse (1962) and Il Deserto Rosso (1963). I
imagine that in broad terms the individual works would set out to respond to the
films individually or collectively, considering themes and topics common to all:
specifically cinematic topics such as narrative, the various psychological and
emotional moods of the tetralogy, cinematography, and of course film sound
itself, an area in which Antonioni is highly respected.
There must be hundreds of ways of mapping the wealth of topics in even one film
to a response in sound alone: mood, narrative, cues from the soundtrack and so
on. In fact the only element that I can think of which would be almost impossible
to map to sound is the elusive quality of stage presence. The two films with which I’
m familiar, L’Avventura and La Notte, featuring the likes of Monica Vitti, Gabriele
Ferzetti, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, are blessed with an
abundance of stage presence (much to the envy I’m sure of many contemporary
Hollywood directors who have to make do with the merely handsome, beautiful
and sexy).
Two sleeve note quotation’s from the work of Seymour Chatman, an expert on
Antonioni’s work, will help set the context:
Antonioni asks us to take a slow, steady look at the world around us, to forget
our ordinary preoccupations, and to contemplate that which lies slightly
athwart them.
Antonioni’s lifelong effort (was) to uncover the meanings of things beneath the
mystery of their appearances
If somebody asked me to respond to Antonioni’s work, my first task would be to turn
to the films first of all and to look at the mapping possibilities. For example, L’
Avventura is in black and white, which to my way of thinking suggests a very
obvious mono piece, as opposed to stereo. The instrumental music by Giovanni
Fusci has implications, picked up in due course by those artists who made use of
woodwind and reed instruments in their contributions, Tyler Wilcox/Corey Fuller
and EKG.
Both L’Avventura and La Notte have something not quite right in the man/woman
relationships, a Hitchockian unease, which seems to have been explored by the
many of the artists, particularly in the form of sustained tones (or drones) with
accompanying field recording or foley type sounds, for example
Block/Sonderberg, Calarco, Courtis.
Antonioni often manages to sustain interest with nothing much happening, or
more accurately with a sense of uncertainty as to what’s going on, reminding me
of some of Robbe-Grillet’s novels. Not an easy feat. The radically linear works of
i8u and Adam Sonderberg would seem to allude to the ‘nothing much happening’
interpretation; the works emphasising field recordings, the majority in other words,
certainly emphasise uncertainty.
While we’re on the topic of field recordings, there would seem to be a
correspondence going on, across many of the pieces, between field recordings
and foley sound at a very basic level, and between field recordings and the
complexity of film sound (less consciously I suspect) as revealed by Michel Chion
in his essential text Audio Vision: Sound on Screen.
The island in in L’Avventura, from which Anna disappears, suggests to me the
island in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a place where all manner of strange
sounds, happenings and mischief come to pass. But these potential energies are
tempered or undermined in that any reasonable symbolic correspondences find
themselves compromised by the ‘just there-ness’ and lassitude of the players. The
complexity and ambiguity of this uneasy amoral mood, also found in the
‘existential’ novels of Camus, comes across in those works that concern themselves
less with wide dynamics and sonic exploration and more with a sense of menacing
stasis.
Overall, Antonioni uses sound extremely well in his films, on a par at times with
Tarkovsky’s sensual meditations on streams, rivers, rain and other water sources. He
frequently foregrounds engine sounds, boats and especially trains (explored by
Meursault, Paiuk, Garet) to the point of wallowing in their uniqueness. In La Notte
we have a range of aircraft, helicopter and rocket sounds – symbolic or random
(who knows?) but certainly menacing and possibly implying a desire to escape. In
L’Avventura the quality and shape of the wind sounds inside the cabin on the
island would grace any field recordists catalogue, as would the sea sounds. The
interplay between foley and dialogue, beautifully orchestrated at times, jumps out
at you, offering yet another possible mapping for the sound artist. J. Winston
Phillips’ offering, to take but one example, explores some of this interplay. In
general most of these subtleties are not lost on the contributing artists. Listening
out for specific allusions has been one of the most enjoyable treats on this album.
Across the films that I watched we have the same seemingly random,
unexplained, almost meaningless events such as random sexual encounters in a
hospital which reminded me of Kafka’s The Trial, in which girls appear oneirically
and seem to make themselves available as and when desired. To my ears, those
pieces which seemed to tackle this theme of randomness or meaninglessness
made the greatest impact, above and beyond any cleverness in composition.
Given the difficulty in ordering 24 individual pieces with so many similarities and
differences between them, the album is very well curated and presented. For
example CD1 is bookended by works using reed and woodwind, CD 2 by piano
works. One slight problem I had was how to go about listening to it. I always like to
know who I’m listening to, which is difficult with 12 artists presenting a short (4 – 7
minutes on average) track on each CD. I suppose you could plug yourself into the
old iPod and wander about bumping into people and things, but good artists like
these deserve much closer listening.
Because of the politics and economics of the film industry we won’t get large
scale commercial movies with sound by artists like those on the album. Nowadays
in particular sound is often left till last, an afterthought, made even more
problematic if a big name composer has to be paid his large fee. So, in order to
get a glimpse into a rosier future, I recommend that you put the CDs on random,
both CDs in the player if possible, then watch one of the movies with the sound
muted. The coincidences that arise are highly edifying and always give me a
heightened sense of optimism for very interesting possible futures where sound and
moving image can seek out new relationships.
I mentioned Michel Chion earlier and would like to return briefly to his work to
round off. As I said, his work is a fine resource for sound artists. I was particularly
helped in my own understanding of film sound, and in my research and practice
with representational sound in general: environmental field
recordings/phonography/what-you-will. Specifically, I found it interesting that four
of his many definitions and terms seemed to gather in most of the important
elements at play in the contributing works.
Elements of auditory setting (EAS): sounds with a more or less punctual source
which appear more or less intermittently and help to create a film’s space by
means of specific, distinct small touches, for example, dog’s barking, phones in an
office next door. EAS inhabits and defines a space unlike permanent ‘sound’
(birds, surf) that is the space itself.
Ambient sound (territory sound): sound that envelops a scene and inhabits its
space (birds, churchbells). These might be called territory sounds because they
inhabit a particular locale.
Materialising Sound Indices (MSIs): these pull the scene towards the material and
concrete. Absence can lead to the ethereal, abstract and fluid.
Superfield: the space created by ambient natural sounds, city noises, music, etc.
that can issue from speakers outside the boundaries of the screen.
Cinema, in combining elements of the novel and the theatre, is able to demand
multiple, ambiguous and even contradictory readings. It is a place of semiotics
and it is here that I find much common ground with purely sonic work based on
field recordings. and/OAR is therefore to be congratulated for making important
connections between art forms and for drawing together such a gifted pool of
artists under the same conceptual roof. So next time can we please have a go at
Tarkovsky’s The Mirror? (James Wyness)
* Note:To read the review with a suggested reading list, visit here.
This wonderful double CD sent to me by and/OAR’s Dale Lloyd is a collector’s
item. Anyone interested in film, film music and sound, or simply wishing to explore
the work of a range of excellent artists should have this album in their collection.
The concept behind the album was to invite selected sound artists to consider a
series of basic guidelines in responding to four of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films:
L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L’Eclisse (1962) and Il Deserto Rosso (1963). I
imagine that in broad terms the individual works would set out to respond to the
films individually or collectively, considering themes and topics common to all:
specifically cinematic topics such as narrative, the various psychological and
emotional moods of the tetralogy, cinematography, and of course film sound
itself, an area in which Antonioni is highly respected.
There must be hundreds of ways of mapping the wealth of topics in even one film
to a response in sound alone: mood, narrative, cues from the soundtrack and so
on. In fact the only element that I can think of which would be almost impossible
to map to sound is the elusive quality of stage presence. The two films with which I’
m familiar, L’Avventura and La Notte, featuring the likes of Monica Vitti, Gabriele
Ferzetti, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, are blessed with an
abundance of stage presence (much to the envy I’m sure of many contemporary
Hollywood directors who have to make do with the merely handsome, beautiful
and sexy).
Two sleeve note quotation’s from the work of Seymour Chatman, an expert on
Antonioni’s work, will help set the context:
Antonioni asks us to take a slow, steady look at the world around us, to forget
our ordinary preoccupations, and to contemplate that which lies slightly
athwart them.
Antonioni’s lifelong effort (was) to uncover the meanings of things beneath the
mystery of their appearances
If somebody asked me to respond to Antonioni’s work, my first task would be to turn
to the films first of all and to look at the mapping possibilities. For example, L’
Avventura is in black and white, which to my way of thinking suggests a very
obvious mono piece, as opposed to stereo. The instrumental music by Giovanni
Fusci has implications, picked up in due course by those artists who made use of
woodwind and reed instruments in their contributions, Tyler Wilcox/Corey Fuller
and EKG.
Both L’Avventura and La Notte have something not quite right in the man/woman
relationships, a Hitchockian unease, which seems to have been explored by the
many of the artists, particularly in the form of sustained tones (or drones) with
accompanying field recording or foley type sounds, for example
Block/Sonderberg, Calarco, Courtis.
Antonioni often manages to sustain interest with nothing much happening, or
more accurately with a sense of uncertainty as to what’s going on, reminding me
of some of Robbe-Grillet’s novels. Not an easy feat. The radically linear works of
i8u and Adam Sonderberg would seem to allude to the ‘nothing much happening’
interpretation; the works emphasising field recordings, the majority in other words,
certainly emphasise uncertainty.
While we’re on the topic of field recordings, there would seem to be a
correspondence going on, across many of the pieces, between field recordings
and foley sound at a very basic level, and between field recordings and the
complexity of film sound (less consciously I suspect) as revealed by Michel Chion
in his essential text Audio Vision: Sound on Screen.
The island in in L’Avventura, from which Anna disappears, suggests to me the
island in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a place where all manner of strange
sounds, happenings and mischief come to pass. But these potential energies are
tempered or undermined in that any reasonable symbolic correspondences find
themselves compromised by the ‘just there-ness’ and lassitude of the players. The
complexity and ambiguity of this uneasy amoral mood, also found in the
‘existential’ novels of Camus, comes across in those works that concern themselves
less with wide dynamics and sonic exploration and more with a sense of menacing
stasis.
Overall, Antonioni uses sound extremely well in his films, on a par at times with
Tarkovsky’s sensual meditations on streams, rivers, rain and other water sources. He
frequently foregrounds engine sounds, boats and especially trains (explored by
Meursault, Paiuk, Garet) to the point of wallowing in their uniqueness. In La Notte
we have a range of aircraft, helicopter and rocket sounds – symbolic or random
(who knows?) but certainly menacing and possibly implying a desire to escape. In
L’Avventura the quality and shape of the wind sounds inside the cabin on the
island would grace any field recordists catalogue, as would the sea sounds. The
interplay between foley and dialogue, beautifully orchestrated at times, jumps out
at you, offering yet another possible mapping for the sound artist. J. Winston
Phillips’ offering, to take but one example, explores some of this interplay. In
general most of these subtleties are not lost on the contributing artists. Listening
out for specific allusions has been one of the most enjoyable treats on this album.
Across the films that I watched we have the same seemingly random,
unexplained, almost meaningless events such as random sexual encounters in a
hospital which reminded me of Kafka’s The Trial, in which girls appear oneirically
and seem to make themselves available as and when desired. To my ears, those
pieces which seemed to tackle this theme of randomness or meaninglessness
made the greatest impact, above and beyond any cleverness in composition.
Given the difficulty in ordering 24 individual pieces with so many similarities and
differences between them, the album is very well curated and presented. For
example CD1 is bookended by works using reed and woodwind, CD 2 by piano
works. One slight problem I had was how to go about listening to it. I always like to
know who I’m listening to, which is difficult with 12 artists presenting a short (4 – 7
minutes on average) track on each CD. I suppose you could plug yourself into the
old iPod and wander about bumping into people and things, but good artists like
these deserve much closer listening.
Because of the politics and economics of the film industry we won’t get large
scale commercial movies with sound by artists like those on the album. Nowadays
in particular sound is often left till last, an afterthought, made even more
problematic if a big name composer has to be paid his large fee. So, in order to
get a glimpse into a rosier future, I recommend that you put the CDs on random,
both CDs in the player if possible, then watch one of the movies with the sound
muted. The coincidences that arise are highly edifying and always give me a
heightened sense of optimism for very interesting possible futures where sound and
moving image can seek out new relationships.
I mentioned Michel Chion earlier and would like to return briefly to his work to
round off. As I said, his work is a fine resource for sound artists. I was particularly
helped in my own understanding of film sound, and in my research and practice
with representational sound in general: environmental field
recordings/phonography/what-you-will. Specifically, I found it interesting that four
of his many definitions and terms seemed to gather in most of the important
elements at play in the contributing works.
Elements of auditory setting (EAS): sounds with a more or less punctual source
which appear more or less intermittently and help to create a film’s space by
means of specific, distinct small touches, for example, dog’s barking, phones in an
office next door. EAS inhabits and defines a space unlike permanent ‘sound’
(birds, surf) that is the space itself.
Ambient sound (territory sound): sound that envelops a scene and inhabits its
space (birds, churchbells). These might be called territory sounds because they
inhabit a particular locale.
Materialising Sound Indices (MSIs): these pull the scene towards the material and
concrete. Absence can lead to the ethereal, abstract and fluid.
Superfield: the space created by ambient natural sounds, city noises, music, etc.
that can issue from speakers outside the boundaries of the screen.
Cinema, in combining elements of the novel and the theatre, is able to demand
multiple, ambiguous and even contradictory readings. It is a place of semiotics
and it is here that I find much common ground with purely sonic work based on
field recordings. and/OAR is therefore to be congratulated for making important
connections between art forms and for drawing together such a gifted pool of
artists under the same conceptual roof. So next time can we please have a go at
Tarkovsky’s The Mirror? (James Wyness)
