RICHARD HAMILTON – DEUS EX MACHINA
When a co-owner of a post-production sound studio, film/tv composer, award-winning sound designer (who worked for clients like Google, NASA, etc) releases his own debut album, it’s time to pay attention.
Deus Ex Machina is a captivating sonic journey that showcases Richard Hamilton‘s many years of sound design experience.
‘Deus Ex Machina’ is used in film making or storytelling when ‘a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurence’. It originated in the ancient Greek theatre, ‘where actors who were playing gods were brought on stage using a machine’ (Wikipedia).
The music on Hamilton‘s album is full of ‘unexpected occurrences indeed. Each track tells a story ‘that revolves around a sci-fi dystopian mood and imagines a far future dystopia relating to ideas of technology, religion, and mystical experiences […] dealing with themes through the sonic lens of four of the world’s major religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.’
These stories may not be immediately apparent from the songs’ incomprehensible titles. But Hamilton provides the general plot and starting point of each song on the Bandcamp track info pages. (To read these outlines, click the track links from the Bandcamp album page)
“But damn that thing to hell. Ever since it arrived, it’s turned us all into jealous, ravenous monstrosities.
We knew peace before, now we fight, we covet, and we hate. This thing is driving us all insane.”
(from \Opium.Naroda> )
It is an interesting experience to read the story and then let the music create your own imaginary movie. But you can also ignore the stories that go with it and let your fantasy run its own course – the music on Deus Ex Machina is extremely cinematic. And overall quite intense!
So don’t play this if you need a calm environment. This is music for sweaty palms!
“Scanning our firewall systems for routine security checks, I saw the tail end of some code drift by….I’ve never seen anything like it
It followed me home and started sending me messages, simple at first, but then they got more frightening. I thought I was going crazy.”
(from Worm.Vishvarupa.sm)
ANTHONY PATERAS – REISE DER SCHATTEN
Another soundtrack – but this time from an existing movie: Anthony Pateras’ score for Reise der Schatten (Journey of Shadows). A soundtrack in a more traditional sense: lots (29) of short themes and miniatures, based on ‘weird folk themes’, performed by a live acoustic ensemble. At times, the music is enriched by the use of feedback, tape delay, analogue synthesizers, and samples from vinyl records ‘to give the film a more fantastical, fairy-tale feeling’.
Reise der Schatten is a debut animation film by Swiss artist Yves Netzhammer. It ‘tells the abstracted story of a genderless being coming to terms with its identity and place in a world full of conflicts and systems of control’.
Initially, Pateras wanted to compose something “typically experimental” for this film, but found that was not what he wanted. He wanted to create “a kind of distance, or perceptual shift, but also a narrative drive and emotional context which is not always clear”.
The initial recording sessions, played on metallophones, laid the foundations for the arrangements of the full acoustic ensemble that followed.
It would be nice to know how this plays out in the film, but there is absolutely no need to know the film to enjoy the music on this album. It’s fun enough to add to the ‘narrative drive and emotional context’ yourself.