The Way of the Flesh
Sep. 26th, 2004 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI've asked John Talaga, aka Fashion Flesh and one half of the Super Madrigal Brothers, to make 'song morphs' for my new album, 'Otto Spooky', due in early 2005. Here's an extract from our correspondence:
Momus to Flesh, September 9th:
'Basically, my album is finished. Listening to it, I'm somewhat missing the sense of disorientation/disorienteering that 'Oskar' had. I think it lacks your magical touch, John! What I'd like to propose is that instead of working on whole songs, you could make transitions between tracks. The order of the songs is already fixed. You'd take musical elements from the end of Track 1 and do a kind of improvisation with them which would segue into musical elements of Track 2, thus paving the way for the next track. Your morphs should be experimental and mental, without being 'glitchy'. They should give listeners a space to relax, wonder, get lost, dream, and appetize them for another song. Each 'morph' could last anything from twenty seconds to two full minutes. Another idea I had was to reproduce the effect of Cantonese Opera, where songs are surrounded by dialog punctuated by drum crashes... My idea was to have voices as stylised as the Cantonese opera singers, but sort of muffled and indecipherable. Just these voices somewhere suggesting an interlude with absurd conversations going on. Sort of Renaldo and the Loafish, or like the skits on hip hop albums, but much more surreal and sound-oriented. You could make the voices yourself, or I could do some, with the help of friends, or we could even use actual dialog from Cantonese Opera. I'll make the final assemblage, combining the songs with the morphs.
If you do get involved in this way, I'm thinking of making a conscious reference to 'Oskar Tennis Champion' by calling the album 'Otto The Ottoman' or 'Otto Bantam Boy' or something like that, cos there's a character in the first song called Otto.'
Flesh to Momus:
'Yes, I'd love to do this by all means! This will be very enjoyable and natural, not at all a forced venture...it's an honour to be part of your vision again... No matter what I've got going on for the next month I'll certainly spend a large/ample amount of time working on this material, focusing fully on its deepest pigmentation and materialization. No glitch indeed, wouldn't even dream of it at this point in my life... I'm thinking a lot more of sweeping blurs that gel into cables and soft cordings (like those piping a silk pillow), smokey analog weavings in place of digitized dodgings. I really like the idea of the voices scattered throughout... perhaps you could include a track on the disc you'll be sending me of just your voicing of fake words, at the end of the disc? I'd love to do a bit of mouthing myself in sparing sprinkles... I think that if I actually overlap our words in quiet spurts here and there it would be the most mysterious. Please do write me back as soon as you get this e-mail to let me know that you have received it. I'm very excited to be included Nick!! The ideas are starting to churn around in my brain already!'
(Later...)
'I got the discs in the post today...I listened to most of it once through already and I think it's absolutely amazing. It sounds soooo great, I'm really sincerely amazed... I'm not going to go into too much detail now, but I really love the overall non-digital sound of it all. It's all got a beatiful smell of psych-folk about it. I'm going to listen to it throughout the whole day today and begin working with it tomorrow night. I feel like a lot of it has both a dusk and dawn fell to it, so I'd like to add an element of night to it... does that make sense to you? I hope you do, and I hope you also think this is a good concept to keep in mind.'
Momus to Flesh:
'Yes, night sounds a good thing to put in. Night is both disorienting and restful, both coffin and bosom. Give it some!'
Flesh to Momus:
'Disorienting yes, restful not necessarily. I was thinking of the auditorial concoction of night to be a bit scarier and stranger than coffin/full slumber... for the times it creeps us out it often seems the coffin is an easier swallow, don't you agree? What I'm getting at is that I wasn't really considering making any of the bits restful really, but more restless. Do you think I should maybe include a bit of a din-ful lullaby to a few of the pieces' ends? If the answer is yes, I'm voting for the more uptempo playful songs to have the nighty-nite feel at the end.'
Momus to Flesh:
'I'm writing this on the bullet train heading down to Kyushu. Tiny houses and tiny mountains flick by at 150 mph. It's the kind of landscape I used to doodle on notepads when I was at school, thinking it was science fiction. But here it is, as real as can be. Factories swing past sporting the audio-electronic brand names that also defined my youth: Panasonic, Sanyo, Sony... This is where those electronics were born, where they're from. If electronic reproduction defines our contemporary reality, this landscape is its Platonic realm.
The main thing is that your morphs should be disorienting and unfocused. A sound lens pulling attention slowly away from one sharply-defined song and making a sort of kaleidoscope which suddenly pulls into tight focus for the next one. The simplest metaphor, though, and perhaps the only important one, is that you're a DJ fading between two records. But you're a much more creative DJ: someone pulling the music around like putty in the cross-fade, and taking it to places DJs can't reach, with effects they don't have. Also, instead of just the 'two places' a DJ moves between, you can go to a 'third place', an intermediate territory of your own invention, before leading the listener back to the tone palette of the next track.'
Flesh to Momus:
'Wonderful, you've supplied all the answers to my questions. I've already begun work on two transitions...I'm in the perfect mindset to be doing this project right now (things seem to be working in this sort of odd magical way for me as of late, which is both weird and great). Your view from the bullet train sounds amazing, especially the tiny mountains image. Okay, well I'm going to get back to the album now. I'm thinking I'll complete three or four of these pieces before I send you mp3s to hear, that way I'll be able to have a bit of time with them to see if I want to alter any of the colors or shapes. Hope all is well with you, and never ever again compare me to a DJ!'
...
Well, as of today seven of the fourteen Flesh Morphs are completed, mysterious little one minute bridges between the fifteen tracks on 'Otto Spooky'. They're fantastic, exceeding my expectation and completely redefining the album, putting mystery and invention into every corner, making it melty, bendy, spooky, chirpy, baroque, dreamy, absurd -- more varied, and even more of a trippy travelogue than it was before. John Talaga is one of the most talented and daring sound designers around today. Judging from the projects he's beginning to be offered, it seems that other people are at last starting to recognize that.
Momus to Flesh, September 9th:
'Basically, my album is finished. Listening to it, I'm somewhat missing the sense of disorientation/disorienteering that 'Oskar' had. I think it lacks your magical touch, John! What I'd like to propose is that instead of working on whole songs, you could make transitions between tracks. The order of the songs is already fixed. You'd take musical elements from the end of Track 1 and do a kind of improvisation with them which would segue into musical elements of Track 2, thus paving the way for the next track. Your morphs should be experimental and mental, without being 'glitchy'. They should give listeners a space to relax, wonder, get lost, dream, and appetize them for another song. Each 'morph' could last anything from twenty seconds to two full minutes. Another idea I had was to reproduce the effect of Cantonese Opera, where songs are surrounded by dialog punctuated by drum crashes... My idea was to have voices as stylised as the Cantonese opera singers, but sort of muffled and indecipherable. Just these voices somewhere suggesting an interlude with absurd conversations going on. Sort of Renaldo and the Loafish, or like the skits on hip hop albums, but much more surreal and sound-oriented. You could make the voices yourself, or I could do some, with the help of friends, or we could even use actual dialog from Cantonese Opera. I'll make the final assemblage, combining the songs with the morphs.
If you do get involved in this way, I'm thinking of making a conscious reference to 'Oskar Tennis Champion' by calling the album 'Otto The Ottoman' or 'Otto Bantam Boy' or something like that, cos there's a character in the first song called Otto.'
Flesh to Momus:
'Yes, I'd love to do this by all means! This will be very enjoyable and natural, not at all a forced venture...it's an honour to be part of your vision again... No matter what I've got going on for the next month I'll certainly spend a large/ample amount of time working on this material, focusing fully on its deepest pigmentation and materialization. No glitch indeed, wouldn't even dream of it at this point in my life... I'm thinking a lot more of sweeping blurs that gel into cables and soft cordings (like those piping a silk pillow), smokey analog weavings in place of digitized dodgings. I really like the idea of the voices scattered throughout... perhaps you could include a track on the disc you'll be sending me of just your voicing of fake words, at the end of the disc? I'd love to do a bit of mouthing myself in sparing sprinkles... I think that if I actually overlap our words in quiet spurts here and there it would be the most mysterious. Please do write me back as soon as you get this e-mail to let me know that you have received it. I'm very excited to be included Nick!! The ideas are starting to churn around in my brain already!'
(Later...)
'I got the discs in the post today...I listened to most of it once through already and I think it's absolutely amazing. It sounds soooo great, I'm really sincerely amazed... I'm not going to go into too much detail now, but I really love the overall non-digital sound of it all. It's all got a beatiful smell of psych-folk about it. I'm going to listen to it throughout the whole day today and begin working with it tomorrow night. I feel like a lot of it has both a dusk and dawn fell to it, so I'd like to add an element of night to it... does that make sense to you? I hope you do, and I hope you also think this is a good concept to keep in mind.'
Momus to Flesh:
'Yes, night sounds a good thing to put in. Night is both disorienting and restful, both coffin and bosom. Give it some!'
Flesh to Momus:
'Disorienting yes, restful not necessarily. I was thinking of the auditorial concoction of night to be a bit scarier and stranger than coffin/full slumber... for the times it creeps us out it often seems the coffin is an easier swallow, don't you agree? What I'm getting at is that I wasn't really considering making any of the bits restful really, but more restless. Do you think I should maybe include a bit of a din-ful lullaby to a few of the pieces' ends? If the answer is yes, I'm voting for the more uptempo playful songs to have the nighty-nite feel at the end.'
Momus to Flesh:
'I'm writing this on the bullet train heading down to Kyushu. Tiny houses and tiny mountains flick by at 150 mph. It's the kind of landscape I used to doodle on notepads when I was at school, thinking it was science fiction. But here it is, as real as can be. Factories swing past sporting the audio-electronic brand names that also defined my youth: Panasonic, Sanyo, Sony... This is where those electronics were born, where they're from. If electronic reproduction defines our contemporary reality, this landscape is its Platonic realm.
The main thing is that your morphs should be disorienting and unfocused. A sound lens pulling attention slowly away from one sharply-defined song and making a sort of kaleidoscope which suddenly pulls into tight focus for the next one. The simplest metaphor, though, and perhaps the only important one, is that you're a DJ fading between two records. But you're a much more creative DJ: someone pulling the music around like putty in the cross-fade, and taking it to places DJs can't reach, with effects they don't have. Also, instead of just the 'two places' a DJ moves between, you can go to a 'third place', an intermediate territory of your own invention, before leading the listener back to the tone palette of the next track.'
Flesh to Momus:
'Wonderful, you've supplied all the answers to my questions. I've already begun work on two transitions...I'm in the perfect mindset to be doing this project right now (things seem to be working in this sort of odd magical way for me as of late, which is both weird and great). Your view from the bullet train sounds amazing, especially the tiny mountains image. Okay, well I'm going to get back to the album now. I'm thinking I'll complete three or four of these pieces before I send you mp3s to hear, that way I'll be able to have a bit of time with them to see if I want to alter any of the colors or shapes. Hope all is well with you, and never ever again compare me to a DJ!'
...
Well, as of today seven of the fourteen Flesh Morphs are completed, mysterious little one minute bridges between the fifteen tracks on 'Otto Spooky'. They're fantastic, exceeding my expectation and completely redefining the album, putting mystery and invention into every corner, making it melty, bendy, spooky, chirpy, baroque, dreamy, absurd -- more varied, and even more of a trippy travelogue than it was before. John Talaga is one of the most talented and daring sound designers around today. Judging from the projects he's beginning to be offered, it seems that other people are at last starting to recognize that.