SCRABBLE THE TALE

MOUTHING WORDS

GROUND TO THE EAR: THE WIRE

Dear Folks at THE WIRE,  

To my amazement your publication has continued to do the impossible!  It has used its considerable powers of persuasion and literary cunning to pique my interest in such sonic drivel as the Dead C (10 pages worth! Really?) and others.  To my regret,  THE WIRE has done much the same with inconsequential one-idea wonders like Oneontrix Point Never,  The Emeralds,  James Ferraro,  Skullflower,  etc.  Glowing appraisals have equalled nothing after purchasing the above.  Thanks for allowing me to indulge my gullibility.                                                            

                                                           Best Regards,
                                                              Arthur          

 Arthur,    

Thanks for the email.  But Hopefully those misses have been offset by a few hits along the way. 

                                                                                                   

                                                               Tony 

                                                          Tony Herrington
                                                   Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
                                                    THE WIRE MAGAZINE

PROCESS & PRODUCT

It's generally intuition that tells you that a particular work is done,  especially when it comes to abstraction.  From my vantage point anything that is easily "read" should be changed,  painted over,  or tossed away,  an artifact of poor decision-making.  This painting offers the artist's touch as both metaphor and  history, and  is especially evident as brushed surfaces give way to both sanded excavations and drawn areas,  an embrace of both randomness and active options/preferences. The above is acrylic paint and medium,  modeling paste,  and pencil on wood.

THE FRAILTY OF LANGUAGE

A rare all Serge track.  I recently de-patched this instrument and am ready to try new sound shapes.  My Serge really seems the most mysterious and confounding of all my modulars.

PROCESS

In a continuum called the creative act,  this is the present state of my latest bit of visual meandering on wood panel. There is little doubt that things will be morphed,  clarified,  destroyed,  expanded,  reduced, roughened, and refined.  Such is the process of finding a fleeting answer to an unknown question.  Problematic,  but not impossible.  Finding forms to describe the ineffable is really what nearly all abstraction is about. Let liminality reign! If there is no frustration or disorientation involved,  there is probably nothing of real value forthcoming.

THIS IS HOW WE DEFORM: Modcan Dual Delay

At present,  the  Modcan Dual Delay may be the ultimate in delay delirium.  Its ability to twist sounds into new shapes,  stretch time, and negotiate frquencies via a built-in lowpass filter is unrivaled in Euro-land.  Control is readily handled through knob-twisting,  numerous 3-position switches,  and a multitude of CV inputs. This monster is available from the fine folks at CONTROL in Brooklyn.

THE SOUND OF BIRDS?

As a pre-teen I found Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS  quite terrifying,  but had little thought of "why?".  Its script's mix of human  desire,  motivation, confrontation,  and fear (as well as bits of humor) shed little light on the bird attacks that remain as frightening today as they were in 1963.   While recently watching a pristine Blu-ray edition of the film I noticed a least  part of the reason for the film's success as a plausible horror. Musicians Remi Gassman and Oskar Sala are given credit for "Electronic Sound Production and Composition",  which in a film with essentially no music (with the exception of  children singing as birds slowly amass outside the school) becomes an important part of its sound design rather than score.  Most of what we hear,  especially during the final attack on the protagonists' house,  is noise produced by one of the first electronic instruments (invented around 1929 by Friedrich Trautwein),  the Mixtur-Trautonium,  the second,  expanded version (noise & envelope generators,   formant & bandpass filters, subharmonic oscillators) of the original instrument.  As a "musician" working with modular synths,  I've wondered how these sounds would be received if divorced from Hitchcock's powerful visuals. Would they have been perceived purely as noise or heard as  intense bird commotion (I'm pretty sure real bird sounds were mixed in)? I especially love that tonal cliches are avoided since there is no chromatic keyboard,  merely metal touch-plates (shades of Don Buchla) and register wire. I certainly give Hitchcock credit for being willing to use seldom heard old tech to create new sounds and ways of hearing.

WHO IS THIS MAN?

Who is this man in the lower right corner enjoying Shawn O'Sullivan's thirty minute set @ Boiler Room NY Deconstruct X the Corner?  Hints:  He always wears white and is one of the owners of New York's greatest modular synth emporium,  CONTROL in Brooklyn.

THE SLEEPERS (YES, PLURAL) HAVE INDEED AWAKENED

Having completed their long winter's nap,  hundreds of baby praying mantises flooded their containment overnight giving us quite the start.  Fully formed and ready for their first meal,  I placed them within various foliages for their protection  and to promote their predatory zeal.

OPTIK: MAMA

I'm generally immune to advertising campaigns of any sort,  but when MAMA (2013)  started giving TV viewers glimpses of some genuine creepiness in an effort to fill theater seats,  I knew I'd be purchasing the blu-ray when released.  As a genre,  contemporary horror films tend toward  teen sex/slasher scenarios that have grown quite tiresome and predictable in their use of "extreme" imagery,  with little reference to anything other than bloody retribution. While bloodletting is minimal in this film,  there are generous amounts of ambiguity in the proceedings,  which does more to promote uneasiness than the confusion  one may encounter if one tends to be a literalist.  Guillermo del Toro is credited as presenter and his fingerprints are everywhere (oh those moths!),  although director Andres Muschetti brings a first to the horror genre,  a ghostly maternal figure based on the female portraits of ill-fated Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.  Those portraits'  elongated faces, blank eyes and basic geometry are equally indebted to both modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi and  African ritual masks.  The acting is generally right on the mark,  especially that of  the little girls Victoria and Lilly,  seemingly protected and scared by Mama.  Jessica Chastain's evolution from child-hating punk bassist to unlikely surrogate mom is effective and believable.  In fact,  this movie (unlike most of the genre) succeeds on the strength of its acting,  characterization,  and atmosphere.  It's horror (and there are jolts aplenty to be enjoyed) is intensified by limiting views of Mama and effective use of CGI,  especially in Mama's movements.  I'm pretty sure the element of magic realism (vaginal holes sprouting moths,  an enormous pile of cherry pits suggesting Mama's nurturing side,  and especially the short,  acid-colored dream sequence that "awakens"  Chastain and gives us Mama's history as tortured soul) come from del Toro.  While I merely touched upon  plot here,  those viewers who've enjoyed films like THE UNINVITED (1944) and the HAUNTING (1963) would be well advised to check out MAMA's serious charms.

PINTURA SIN TITULO

Here is the finished version of that recent painting,  still without title.  Hopefully I did not zap it of its original energies or intention.  This is the second in the series,  of which they'll be five works (something about odd numbers?).

ALIEN INVASION?

In a world filled with internet misinformation,  this recently discovered photo should serve as a warning to those who roll their eyes at the possibility of visitors from outer space.  Now if only Orson Welles was still with us. I'll pass on the idea of a really big chicken!

PROCESS: First Markings

And so it begins with a blend of the accidental and the purposeful.  While gesture is stunted by the small format here,  an intimacy is gained that is as elusive as permanence in the process of gleaning form and meaning from the ether (in this case,  half-remembered histories and sensations).  Now let's see what this becomes.