Discussion on the soundtrack of the film 'Inception'
Inception brings the trend for slow music to the big screen
Composer Hans Zimmer's ultra-slow manipulation of an Edith Piaf song displays the beauty in bringing the BPM right down
Christopher Nolan's Inception. Christopher Nolan's Inception. Photograph: Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros
The malevolent, booming horns that sound throughout Inception are one of the film's finest features. Their power lies not just in volume and repetition, but also in rebuilding part of the film's architecture, just as Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio's characters rebuild the architecture in their dreams.
Without giving away the plot, Edith Piaf's Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien plays a crucial role in linking Inception's real and dream worlds. Now it's emerged that Hans Zimmer, who composed the music, extrapolated his entire score from the Piaf song. In keeping with the atmosphere of blurred consciousness, Zimmer slows down the brass sounds to a somnambulant trudge.
What was once human, defiant and romantic is now lurching, formidable and unstable. Zimmer does something that numerous artists have also recently realised – that slowing music down dissolves and recasts it.
Games, the duo featuring Joel Ford and Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin, have been releasing mixtapes of slowed-down 80s hits over the past year. For Lopatin, who has railed against the often limited sonic palette of underground music, these tapes are proof that slowing down music dismissed as cheesy reveals its weirdness, beauty and potential.
Chopped and screwed is a form of hip-hop from Houston that slows tracks down to a crawl. Perhaps the sweltering heat of Texas encourages this lethargy? The muggy clarity of the weed and cough-syrup highs sought on the scene also heighten the music's sensuality. As Scott Wright noted on this blog, chopped and screwed has been influential on "drag" artists, while mainstream rappers often use a few bars of a screwed, ultra-deep vocal to push their masculinity into the red, a fast-track to thuggishness. Meanwhile Ciara's recent return to the sound is canny; set against the uptempo European house beats of chart rap, her slowness thrills.
As much as I love Zimmer's music for Inception, I wondered what Philip Jeck, the master of the musical subconscious, would have done with it. Jeck resurrects battered vinyl classics, slowing down and looping the likes of Aaron Copeland to create fragments of songs echoing across time and sleep.
In a hyperactive digital world, slowed-down music pushes you back into your chair and demands you sit still; it forces you to consider the structures built and choices made. As with Inception, it casts light on a potential world where music sounds different and life runs in an unfamiliar gear.
EXPERIMENTS END | Lancaster University 8th July 2010
An evening of experimental music and live art
Barkers House Farm, South West Campus, Lancaster University
8 July 2010 19.30 – 23.00
To mark the end of its year-long Experimentality programme, the Institute for Advanced Studies presents an evening of turntablism, electroacoustic music, live painting, ambient soundscapes, performance art and vj-ing. Find out how experiments end.
Optional buffet dinner.
Featuring:
- Philip Jeck
- Rodrigo Constanzo and Angela Guyton
- Mary Oliver, Lois Klassen and Craig Vear
- Claire Marshall
- smO
- Paul Morris
- Matt Walch
Experiments End can be attended as a separate event, but is also part of the international conference The Experimental Society (8-9 July), organised by the IAS in collaboration with the Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics and Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.
£5 – event only – pay on door
£20 – event with buffet dinner and wine – book online by 1 July by following ‘online store’ link here
Philip Jeck | North Sea Jazz Festival 11th July 2010
Volga, Rotterdam | 17:15 - 18:15
Philip Jeck (turntables, electronics).
Philip Jeck once made an installation with 180 turntables. The 58-year-old British sound artist called this prize-winning project Vinyl Requiem. In a more intimate setting, a performance by Philip Jeck is equally intriguing. Contrary to light-fingered turntable artists from the American hip-hop scene, Jeck only needs two rickety portable record players and a tiny keyboard to bring his "plunder phonics" to life. Using all kinds of fragments from records, the Englishman builds up new compositions of which imperfection appears to be the intrinsic beauty. At the Festival, Jeck is on the stage together with the Norwegian artist Hild Sofie Tafjord. As the daughter of a tuba player, Tafjord inherited a fascination for brass instruments. Her specialism is the elegant French horn. On her debut album Kama, from 2007, the musician from Norway proves that she doesn't shrink from manipulating her improvised notes electronically.
More info here
Philip Jeck Live in London | 1st July 2010
All Time Low Presents:
Oren Ambarchi
Philip Jeck
Elite Barbarian
Plus DJs Graham Erickson and Alex Jako
July 1st 2010
Doors 7.30pm
Corsica Studios,
4/5 Elephant Road
London SE17 1LB
Tickets £8 in advance from http://www.wegottickets.com/http://www.wegottickets.com/event/82786
or £10 on the door.
www.corsicastudios.com
www.alltimelowproductions.com
Philip Jeck Live in Turin | 22nd May 2010
Cappella di Sant’Uberto, Torino
Philip Jeck è un compositore, coreografo e artista multimediale di origine inglese. Dopo aver studiato arti visive al Dartington College of Arts a Devon in Inghilterra ha iniziato a esplorare i territori della musica elettronica nei primi anni Ottanta componendo colonne sonore per numerosi spettacoli teatrali e di danza. Artista tra i più avventurosi della scena del Regno Unito, con Il passare del tempo Jeck è diventato una figura di riferimento prima nel panorama europeo poi in quello mondiale raccogliendo consensi soprattutto in Giappone e negli Stati Uniti. Jeck ha definito un mondo sonoro dalla particolare fisionomia: straordinario manipolatore di suoni e musiche preesistenti, l’artista crea la musica usando frammenti dai vecchi dischi di vinile che colleziona con passione ed ha definito una musicalità riconoscibile per il flusso avvolgente ed ininterrotto. Il suo interesse per i giradischi ed i dischi lo ha portato a creare alcune installazioni di grande rilievo nel mondo dell’arte contemporanea, come “Vinyl Requiem”, per la quale erano utilizzati contemporaneamente 180 giradischi degli anni ’50 e ’60 (e che ha vinto il Premio Time Out Performance del 1993), come “Off The Record”, realizzata usando da 6 a 80 giradischi nell’ambito di Sonic Boom alla Hayward Gallery a Londra nel 2000. Parallelamente alle sue installazioni ha proseguito il cammino interessandosi ai delay per chitarra, alle tastiere elettroniche ed ai giradischi approdando ad una musica visionaria ed onirica, in cui disegna con i suoni creazioni che si materializzano all’improvviso, che coinvolgono e spiazzano il pubblico dei suoi concerti. Dal vivo Jeck agisce come un artista visivo, plasmando i suoni in diretta versando colla sulla superficie dei dischi di vinile che utilizza, creando sequenze di loop, sussurri melodici infrante da percussioni violente.
Philip Jeck Live in London | The Luminaire 11th May 2010
[pic: Mike Harding]
GRAILS
Philip Jeck, Invisible Bees
Tickets available here
Philip Jeck & Hildur Gudnadottir live in London | February 2010
Arctic Circle - The Resonance of Music with Water
Kings Place, 80 York Way, London NW1
Wednesday 24th February 2010
Time: 20:00
Venue: Hall One
An Ark for the Listener, a new work inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Wreck Of The Deutschland.
"An aspiration in answer to an inspiration,
out of music shaped by all the sea has claimed,
as is the inevitable shipwreck of our existence.
Salvaged out of vinyl, by way of ear, hand and electricity."
"And I have asked to be... out of the swing of the sea." (G M Hopkins)
Thursday 25 February
Time: 20:00
Venue: Hall One
Hauschka with Hildur Guðnadóttir
Haushka is the alias of Dusseldorf keyboardist Volker Bertelman. His critically-acclaimed albums on the 130701 imprint evince a playfully accessible approach to the often austere realm of the prepared piano. Haushka is joined tonight by gifted Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir for a major new, aquatically-themed commission.
Friday 26th February
Time: 19:00
Venue: Hall One
Tickets can be booked here
Photos from Atmospheres 3
Philip Jeck wins Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers
Philip Jeck has won the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers 2009. A presentation ceremony took place at The Royal Institute of British Architects, London, on 9th November 2009.
Congratulations to Philip on a well-deserved and long overdue award.
See Jeck live: Philip has two gigs scheduled in London in November and December at Café Oto. At “The Night of the Long Worms” Jeck plays a rare bass guitar plus effects set and at “Atmospheres 3” he plays a turntable set. For further information and tickets, visit the TouchShop.
www.phf.org.uk
www.philipjeck.com
Philip Jeck in the TouchShop
The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music
Published by Ashgate, this book by James Saunders features a chapter on Philip Jeck (and Phill Niblock). It is available from Amazon, but it is very pricey...
