inland empire

so
after many months of panting for the new david lynch film
which for more than one reason i didn’t actually get to see in the theatre…

i finally got to sit down and watch it
before i go into what i thought of the film
i need to preface it with a little personal background

i can’t watch any of his films
without getting completely unhinged

when i watch a david lynch film
i get really inspired
i think its due to me listening to his films more than watching

perhaps what i love the most about his movies
is not the plot (in the utmost sense of the non traditional)
but rather the smallest details that are amplified by sound

whole minutes of footage could be freeze frames aside from one flickering light and an undertone of audio darkness…

he finds a beautiful/weird/frightening image at random,
draws you into it
and then makes you watch it while the audio makes it slip into something more evil
which while its not be the most hollywood accessible form of film making
someone with a taste for the dark and droll
like myself
stays happy and devoted and secretly wanting to score his next film [even if its the just david lynch reading a years worth of weather reports for two hours].

moving on!

anyone that has seen mulholland drive or lost highway from mr.lynch will know
there is a focal point for change or a turning point
where the main character will suddenly change into a completely different person, or walk through a door or into a corner of darkness and everything gets all past present future colliding confusion inducing batshit crazy
[its those moments i cherish the most]
where you suddenly are thinking, “wait so i blink and its a different film? so wait what am i seeing? how can this be?”

coming from the previous two films i have to say
that pretty much ALL of inland empire is “challenging” in the same way
theres the usual exposition that happens in the beginning to get you comfortable with linear time and consecutive events…
and then bang!
about 40ish minutes you will find the moment where you’d usually be saying to yourself “wow! so this is what it must be like to be a full time paranoid schizophrenic”
however,
heres where Inland Empire differs from his previous films
by the end you actually feel as if during the course of the film
someone snuck in and drained you of your sanity with a thick rusty needle
i felt QUITE insane when i turned the tv off.
its the most terrifying experience ive had [while watching a movie]

i spent two hours afterwards
staring into the dark
waiting.

It deserves to be watched again.

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dead on the inside

some of you may or may not have noticed that little lst.fm widget over there on the left…

you may also have noticed
that I’m doing a whole lot of…
(you can call it research )
listening in the death metal genre

technically speaking
based on sheer speed alone
it should not be capable of being played with non-demon powered hands
[or an egg beater with a guitar pick or drum sticks attached to it]
yet it is people
playing drums, guitars, cookie monster impersonating

there is a cohesion
a unification of perfectly timed percussion and the other distorted drop tuned things (mostly guitars)

you’d think this would be an easy thing to emulate with machines.
It’s not.

with most electronic music that attempts to be more “aggressive”
it ultimately winds up coming across more ambient to my ears
you know what im talking about¹
as they are just “joyful noise”, the drums cease to exist
I stop listening to the percussion and focus on my ears on the backdrop.

note to electronic producers:
just because your percussion is above the 168bpm mark does not mean you are angry. it just means you are probably a little more disorganized than you should be. Admittedly it takes great skill to write anything above your standard 4/4 at 144bpm that doesn’t suck I haven’t been able to sucessfully do it and probably won’t ever.

There is no denying the intent of a decently produced death metal track . it is here to kick you in your teeth and take body parts as trophies.

So the real question as a producer is:
Now that I’ve identified a problem what should/can be done about it? how do I translate this into something useful?

• add distorted guitar? no definately not
• point my research towards gabber? no,… well maybe.
• drop 80% of melody and focus more on harmonic structures? hmmm theres a brainstorm waiting to happen

anyway
I’ll quit with the rambling
and leave you instead with some death metal gems that i recommend

In order of significance

• cryptopsy
• suffocation
• dead horse
• Necrophagist
• bolt thrower
• cannibal corpse
• borhen and der club of gore former death metal band gone doom jazz

enjoy

¹ noisy random drums with some ambient noise that slips in and out of the mix

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in case you missed it

theres a nice write up over at
create digital music
that documents the “clever” use of some of the tools that live in my “studio”
complete with some recent studio pics and some controller setups

fun to be had.

honestly,
i was surprised to see it
(even if they left out the pics of the studio rack i finished building)
who knew that my setup makes the audio geeks drool
;)

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