So I was walking my youngest son to school on rainy day in May and decided to take some video of him on my iPhone. Yeah, not a big hit with him. But by the end of it he seemed to be less annoyed with me than the beginning. I shot this without any intention of it being used for anything but I was struck by how well it worked with a piece of music I was working on at the time.
Music & Sound Design by Stars NYC
I’ve got something of a crush on found object percussion. Is that a thing? Well, I’m not sure what it’s called exactly. I record things like scraping rocks, ripping paper, zippers, ice cubes in glasses etc.. Then I tweak them to make them sound either exactly like the thing they are, or nothing. I added the glockenspiel because who doesn’t like a little glock with their rocks?
Backwards guitars, strings, 6/8 time signature… You already know what it is: A woman, slow motion – flowing hair and gown – her delicate, bejeweled hand caressing the curves of a sleek automobile while a dashing man in a tuxedo peers approvingly over the top of his martini… Well, I suppose it could also have been a taco bell commercial showing a fajita being covered by some new awesomesauce. Either way, definitely slow-mo. This is the uncut version. (rhythm track is field recordings of water glasses and torn paper).
The way I picture it, this is either a dream sequence in a Fassbinder movie or maybe a hallucination segment in a Darren Aranofsky film. The bummer is that neither of these guys has called me. However, that didn’t stop me from making it anyway. In reality, this was a proof of concept for myself. I wanted to turn some found samples I had made into loops and sprinkle on some glitchy ambience to make something tasty. It’s like a disturbing little slice of pie in that way.