This song directly influenced the synthesis processes I used to create ‘Flick a tooth’. I found this song to be an incredibly helpful tool to keep the piece on track.
Undo K From Hot – 750 Dispel
I found the drums and manic synthesis on this song to be incredibly inspiring. I used this track a lot for reference when composing.
Yen Tech – Herd
I used this track as reference when composing, especially rhythmically.
The Body – To Carry The Seeds of Death Within me
This track inspired a lot of the themes and ideas within ‘Fick a Tooth’
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
I found this quote particularly inspiring and decided to base my piece around it. I wanted to create a piece that was particularly pervaded with jovial chaos and bombastically furious disregard for things to come. The piece is called “Flick a tooth” in reference to an old Italian gesture meaning “I would not even give you the dirt from under my nail”
This piece will be based around the loss of identity and rejection of congruence – accepting loss of identity and congruence in an abrasive fashion – finding identity and congruency in chaos.
I also want the track to use an array of experimental sound design techniques, creating a plethora of glitchy, broken beats, abrasive sounds and a tonal melody. I wanted to encourage these sounds as I feel its complementary to the themes of the piece
I have found that the most common act of violence in performance is the act of mosh dancing. Moshing is usually found but not limited to in metal, punk and hardcore culture. Moshing was adopted by multiple scenes since the 1980s, originally finding its place within the California and Washington, D.C. hardcore punk scenes. During these performances, the artists would encourage members of the audience to form ‘pits’, people would jump into/onto each other in an improvised ‘full-contact’ dance. Music scholar Erik Hannerz writes in the book Performing Punk (2015):
“To mosh […] was articulated as the legitimate way of experiencing the music”. Moshing had therefore become not only a dance to the music, but its highly intense bodily aspect was the legitimate way, both for artist and audience, to participate in creating the concert and the musical experience.”
Moshing is engraved into the cultures of extreme music scenes – I will argue that moshing is a valid way to fully express yourself within a performance, although it’s not without its risks.
Moshing is engraved into the cultures of extreme music scenes – I will argue that moshing is a valid way to fully express yourself within a performance, although it is not without its risks. Edvard Haraldsen Valberg quotes in their Nordic Journal for artistic research.
“Mosh Pit or Death Pit” (sic!) from Abcnews in 2008, Bamboozle Festival in New Jersey is mentioned, where 50 people were injured after a mosh pit “got out of hand”. “There is no way to crowd surf [be carried/pushed out over the audience] or stage dive [jump out from the stage and into the arms of the audience] safely consistently”, said the safety representative at the festival. Later in the article, it is explained that around 10 000 people have been injured during the last decade, and that there were 9 deaths from 1994 to 2006 in mosh-related accidents.”
I hold Gabber and Hardcore culture very close to my heart – it has been a fountain of inspiration over the years and has duly impacted how I perceive and create art. My father moved from Belfast to London in the early nineties to escape the violence of the troubles, there he discovered a passion for production and DJing through underground raves in North London. Using the money he made as a plasterer, he bought two Technics 1210s, a 303, a 909 and a plethora of Mokum and Ruffneck records. Becoming absorbed in hardcore culture he told me how himself and his mates would march around in Nike Airmax and full “bin bag” nike track suits – Dancing, Djing and performing at raves.
I very vividly remember the soundtrack to my childhood being the Thunderdome XVII and Tidy Trax CDs – I loved these compilations. The intensity of these tracks pathed the way for the art I’ve grown to become interested in today. The tracks had so much energy and personality – they’re cool, not taking themselves too seriously, having a cheeky sense of humour. I still find the reoccurring themes of anti-authority and chaos to be incredibly inspiring today. I find hardcore and gabber culture so inviting. I always find myself returning to a Thunderdome CD when I need to remind myself of how to inject personality into music.
This week I decided to compose a piece inspired by the performances and theory I’ve learned about during my Sonic Cultures research and Visiting practitioners’ lectures. The piece involves heavy modes of synthesis and myself, talking, crying, screaming into an authentic WWII tank commander’s throat microphone.
I enjoyed working with the pacing of this piece and exerting a lot of pent-up manic energy. I wanted to use Fluxus ideologies within this piece – recording myself moving objects around the room – walking back and forth – working with substance in simplicity. Applying the idea of destroying the boundary between art and life was new to me and I found it to be quite enriching.
I was introduced to 100 Gecs in 2019, just as their single ‘Money Machine’ started to gain traction on RYM and numerous Facebook and Tik Tok shit posting circles. Needless to say, I despised this song, this was just some dead crunk-core, try-hard meme with some ‘Bro-step’ and ‘Happy Hardcore’ Serum pre-sets… according to Spotify I’ve heard the song over two-hundred times now – I couldn’t stop listening, 100 Gecs grew on me like no other artist I have experienced… in the end I became obsessed, following them almost religiously.
Their super sugary, elastic production style mixed with cheesy, self-absorbed, Monster Energy-soaked lyrics are all encompassing of Zoomer culture, the blueprint for the new maximalist wave of sugary billboard pop. Over the next few years, you can expect this mode of flamboyant hyper pop to creep its way onto the charts – similarly to how bubble-gum bass did in the mid 2010’s with artists like Carly Rae Jepsen and Charli xcx picking up popular producers within the scene to produce fantastically compromised work.
Recently I’ve found myself listening to them again more and more – 1000 Gecs is a fantastic summertime album I have to recommend.
Iggy Pop hacks at his chest with a broken glass bottle, he explains that he did this due to “shame”.
HANATARASH
Stills and sound from the infamous Hanatarash performance in which Yamantaka Eye puts multiple lives at risk when ploughing through the venue with a bulldozer.
CRASH WORSHIP
live in Bremen, 1996, Crash Worship perform with huge industrial objects In a circle, in the middle of the venue.
JUSTICE YELDHAM
Collection of clips and images of Justice Yeldham performing. Yeldham connects contact microphones to a huge pane of glass, blowing, chewing and stabbing himself to create sound, manipulating the sound with effects pedals wrapped around his waist.
Within the anarchic spirit of the Neo-Dada movement in the 1950s came Fluxus and with Fluxus came the concept of Danger music. Danger music is inherently faithful to the goals of the Fluxus school – to destroy the boundary between art and life, to “purge the world of bourgeoisie sickness….” and underscore a revolutionary mode of thinking. Danger music was coined by Paul Nouge’s in his work ‘Music is dangerous’ and then continued by Nam June Paik’s “Danger music for Dick Higgins”
How would artists aim to accomplish this with music? Danger music “is based on the concept that some pieces of music can or will harm either the listener or the performer, understanding that the piece in question may or may not be performed.” With this in mind, throwing CBU-24 bomb at an audience could become an anti-war statement about the Vietnam war (Phil Corner’s “One antipersonnel-type CBU bomb will be thrown into the audience”) or eating, screaming and stabbing one’s gums with a three-foot pane of glass could become a disturbing commentary on self-hatred (Justice Yeldham)
I find these ideas and the teachings of the fluxus school to be incredibly stimulating. The abrasiveness in its simplicity feels guttural. A lot of the compositional ideas have so much personality, humour as well as being, occasionally, disturbingly absurd.
Nouge argues that all music is dangerous in that it challenges the listener, stating that music can cause wars – it is believed that Hitler invaded Poland using a marching band playing the Polish National Anthem and received cheers instead of gunfire. I find the idea that sound and music has an underlying psychological power, sinister or not, that goes unnoticed by most incredibly interesting.
I was inspired by a quote by Arvo Pärt, “Have you thanked god for your failure already”. I found this quote as I was composing this piece, its implications on the future and present made how to move forward with creating this piece so much more fluid.
I was inspired to create a lament for the future using the past. I wanted to create a sense of mourning and longing in the past and uncertainty for the future, I wanted these two elements to twist and walk together, I wanted to create an ethereal instability.
It is said that the most sensitive instrument is the human voice, with this in mind I decided to whisper stretched words, like an incredibly long eulogy, reflective of time.
I wanted to create electricity, which would weave and knit its way though the eulogy, pressing at it – unstable and exciting.
I used a sample of waves washing sand on the beach, reflective of time starting over.
My piece then uses these layers and pairs them with a string section, which to me, is a fundamentally earthly sound – grounding and moving the piece.
The piece then slowly sways, twisting in and out with each element. The chords at the beginning open the way for a huge sounding crescendo of all these elements.
With Gareth and Jose’s previous lectures in mind I began to experiment with Musique concrete techniques in order to build a soundscape in line with the themes of the project. For the first instrument I used a multitude of drone like string samples layered with vocals I had recorded.
I wanted to make the piece feel intimate, in reflection to the bar scene in The Shining. To do this I used a lot of whisper like vocal recordings, layering them with long, sustained strings. To create the futuristic element, I created an ‘electricity’ sounding synth patch. I then used a sample of waves washing up on a beach, I used this to create atmosphere and space within the track, I wanted to add more earthly tones to ground the piece rather than having it hyper-futuristic sounding.
I wanted to create a short repeating musical phrase to make the piece more meditative or hypnotic. I felt like this was an appropriate thing to do considering the main themes of reflection and futurism.
I feel like I was able to create a rich ambient piece which reflected the themes we wanted to convey as well as relate to my collaborator’s pieces. I felt the drone like mixture of the strings, my voice and the electricity created a soundscape both longing and mournful though this I feel I was able to achieve my goal in creating a lament for the past using the future.
