Bangkok syndrome

Kemf Twist rooftop festival

2009-11-26T15:17:00.008+07:00

Here's an extract from my live set. The set is normally about 50 minutes beginning electro hip-hop breaks, then dub-tech and finish with a proper techno US sound in the inspiration of detroit and chicago beats. All being composed sounds, 100% home-made.
I performed live last saturday at Kemf TWIST party (Khaosan electronic music festival) which took place at Suksabai bar, soi Rambuttri, on the fifth floor, the rooftop.

On the wild main stage was performing DJ Aki from Womb tokyo with his groovy drum and bass set.
I was in the upper mezzanine room where the ambiance was quite responsive as well.

Live set extract by Fundamental harmonics

Silent sounds

2009-11-07T14:49:00.004+07:00

Silent scream is approaching. 20 to 30 november at Democrazy theatre.

Directed by Wasuratchata Unaprom (Alumni in scenography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design London) and featuring solo performance by Pattarasuda ‘Bua’ Anuma Rajadhon (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art London), the play will also involve video installation by animator and drawing artist Millie Young.

And for the audio environment, i'm on the job to depict some inner, deep and tormented textures.

Here's an exemple of soundscape i made that we probably gonna use:

Clones society 2

2009-10-20T11:20:00.004+07:00

LES MULTIPLES / LA TELE C’EST MON DADA / EPISODE01

LES MULTIPLES / LE CENTER DROME / EPISODE 05

These are some excerpts from animated series "Les multiples" ("The multiples") on which I worked on in 2007. There are 6 episodes of 12 minutes.
Shown in "La nouvelle trilogie" (produced by Gilles Galud and Bruno Gassio) on Canal +, the story is about a big TV producer cloning average people to use those clones, those multiples, in his TV repetitive shows and furthermore to use them in some obscure trafficking. A trashy and bitter universe.

I produced and pre-mixed the foley, sound effects and backgrounds on the 6 episodes. Music and jingles were composed by studio X-track.
Directed by Julien David and written by Julien David and David Azencot.

I've made a previous post on which you can see the first draw, home produced pilot for "The multiples"

Peter Sullivan was living in a quiet place

2009-10-19T22:59:00.005+07:00

SCREAM FROM THOUSAND LAKES

Scream from 1000 lakes is still awaited in theatre. No news since we had this catchy trailer a few years ago. No doubts that we wanna see more.

Directed by Julien David, this is a real trailer for a fake blockbuster in which balloons take over and become the actors.
Julien's idea was to use the reciepe of hollywoodian trailers, using an imaginary standard story-line.

After his shooting and editing I had to record the different actors for the voices, some supposed to come from the fictional scenes plus a voice-over for the trailer.
Then I sourced and produced different sound effects, giving a color that would carry the sense it already came from a movie.
At the end I included the music in the mix, which has been composed by Ronan Maillard.

The result is pretty entertaining and has been shown on tv network Canal + in "Les films faits à la maison"

Hell of a season

2009-10-19T21:27:00.006+07:00

Whispering ghosts

Last year i composed the entire sound design, voice editing and soundscapes, for "Whispering ghosts", an experimental 12min film melting visuals, audio, and poetry.
Directed by Taiki Sakpisit, and written by Jandhara Jansirin Suttichat, the piece was originally created for the "Art of corruption" festival.

Inspired from Arthur Rimbaud's "A season in hell", text lines in whispering ghost thus refer to several scapes and characters, that will constitute the sequences in the film. Such as:
the witch whispering curses, the young girl, the judgement, the wandering spirit of a new-born, the lovers, the deal, the death, the witch again.

"Whispering ghosts" was in september selected and shown at the 13th Thai short film and video festival, taking place at Bangkok Art and Culture Center.
It eventually got a price, The Vichimatra Award. "Vichimatra awards are given to shorts which demonstrate distinctive achievements in filmmaking according to the jury's judgement."

Complex deliquescence

2009-10-15T20:42:00.007+07:00

Last week Delicate organized "Complicate" in this jovial and sympathetic spot in RCA, Cosmic café.
Experimental rock or electronica live act is the motto.

The apostate started the discussion and set the mood with some inspired post new wave rock sonic injections.
Giwi not shake then delivered some interesting sequences drawing a fragile and playful electronica.
Space 360 and Dj Ramin arrived with a burst of energic beats, bass and well placed scratches.
At midnight it was my turn, for a 30 min set on Live, attacked at 105 BPM with some electro non binary beats, to finish with a jackin tech-house sound at 120 bpm.
At this point, Frozen and Kijjaz took the wires and finished with pleasant experimental techno electronica tunes.

A good night, a different sound in Bangkok indeed, check out the next ones.

Le malentendu

2009-10-15T20:20:00.010+07:00

Currently working on soundscapes for a theatre play. It's called Silent scream, an adaptation from Albert Camus' dark novel "The misunderstood".
The piece will be performed at Democrazy theatre from 20 to 30 november at 7.30pm.

I'll post some audio excerpts soon.

Almeria

2009-08-21T09:11:00.002+07:00

Almeria by Fundamental harmonics

An inspired melodic techno track. Named after Gainsbourg's lyrics in "Initials" BB song:

"Agitant ses grelots
Elle avança
Et prononça ce mot :
Alméria !"

Lunar race

2009-07-21T15:04:00.016+07:00

All it's july 21 so this post will be lunar, no choice.

At the occasion of the 40th anniversary of moon manned landing, we've received some good surprises since a few weeks:

On july the 3rd the Jodrell Ban k Observatory (University of Manchester) released an original audio recording of their radio-telescope capturing signals from Apollo 11 and soviet mission Luna 15, on the july 21 1969.
Sovietics, in a last attempt, launched Luna 15, an unmanned mission, on the 13th of july three days before Apollo 11. With the purpose of landing it on the lunar surface and collect soil before the Americans.

After 52 orbits around our satelitte, on the 21st the Jodrell's team in Manchester could hear Luna 15 probe descending to the ground, then the signal diseappeared, bringing to the conclusion that the probe arrived too fast and crashed onto the Sea of crisis.
Article and audio: How US was nearly pipped to first moon rock samples.

This piece of audio recalls a drama that we haven't heard so much about, that the stellar race was being played till the last day!

But this one migh have brought a beginning of collaboration between the two ennemies nations:
After Luna 15 launch, Henry Kissinger asked astronaut John Borman who had some good contacts at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to find out urgently what where their intentions.

Boorman called and head of academy Mstislav Keldysh fairly sent back the orbits area planned for Luna 15, and ensured that they will not interfere with Apollo 11 trajectories.

The russian last gamble

And for finish, the audio of the Eagle's landing:

Photos credits: Jodrell Bank observatory-Bbc; Luna 15-Nasa

Mix for download

2009-06-25T12:37:00.005+07:00

Here is a mix I made for UBradio, go download it right now.
U'll find some Carl Craig, Radioslave, Padded Cell etc...
More mixes to come, and you can also check the Wrong Disco sessions once a month with DJ Will. Download both set for the price of one, the price being zero of course.

UBmix02

Prints of Persia

2009-06-15T17:40:00.011+07:00

Persian traditional music, as indian classical, has always seduced me. Hypnotic harmonics of the santoor, narrow melodies and repetitive patterns. You can definitely feel a past rich in culture and emotion in it.

I've been following the protest events after Iran election on the 12th of june, on Twitter. It's been very reactive, hundreds of tweets per minute on average. Iranian students were twitting from universities. And then, thousands of people from anywhere in the world were forwarding the updates, live pictures or mobile videos.

At some moments, the network was really acting as an organized team of co-workers. As social websites were censored in the country, iranians had to access it via proxies. So some Twitter users were posting valid adresses of proxies, from where others could also connect and access site to spread their updates.

So let's meditate on that and finish by plungeing into the stunning persian-jazz of Dr LLoyd Miller. He was a multi-instrumentist who used to perform often on Iranian TV in the 70's, when western music was still not banned from the country. Definitely worth a dig.

Totally maboul

2009-05-26T12:25:00.012+07:00

Just found that on youtube, this short is series of animated loops programmed by Jim Ellis under a highly haunting track composed by Aksak Maboul.
The track itself, "Scratch holiday" 1986, sounds like a vinyl loop lost into a reverb scape, surrounded by eerie voices and layers that are slightly detuned. Simply delicious. We can easily say this obscure belgian band was at the avant-garde of an ambiant experimental post-rock scene.

To be convinced, just listen to this "Modern lesson", 1979:

Aksak Maboul is also notable for being the project of Marc Hollander, who will found the unfamous label Crammed Disc in 1980.
Crammed was undoubtfully quite a creative label working the underground electro new-wave scene, releasing artists such as Tuxedomoon, Minimal compact, Karen Finley, Colin Newman, Hector Zazou or the Freezone ambiant compilation in the 90's.

Empire

2009-05-18T16:00:00.015+07:00

This downtempo piece begin on a low pitched detuned guitar sampled from a vinyle full of cracks. Old and unwanted 1 euro vinyle in second-hand music stores are still a good option to find an intro or two where some sound loops are useable.

I then played the xylophone synth over it, following a kind of ritual and hypnotic ambiance. One reason is that the track was inspired from a visit in the Khmer outstanding temples of Angkor Wat.
The monk's dawn chant rising in the second part of the track has been recorded there.

Kobal spien

Clones society

2009-05-05T08:26:00.032+07:00

LES MULTIPLES / LE PILOTE

A piece of electro composed for the apocalyptic ending sequence of the animated film "Les multiples" (2003).

This 13 min satyric picture was directed by Julien David and Julien Legoupil and draw an exciting, trashy and visionnary criticism of reality shows, TV production, and fame that attracts people.

I was also in charge of the whole sound design process, voice recording, edit, sound effects and mix.
View the film here (no english sub though).

Synopsis:

In a middle class French town, middle-class guys Promotéo and l'Unique-unique have built a new business: the Developping Notoriety Agency (DNA).
Cloning has become an everyday activity, therefore DNA proposes to the population, a clean, fast and industrial cloning as to multiply as much as possible the access to Fame.

This is an electro track I composed for the ending sequence:
Vision of prachan

Trajectories

2009-04-29T12:35:00.034+07:00

Techno piece from 2006. Constant or deviant, everything is relative...
Deviant motion

Clair obscur

2009-04-23T21:36:00.043+07:00

Not so long ago, was an era where electronic producers had to compose with black and white Atari ST, synth, keyboards, drum machines and a strange thing called midi.
One day, just like that, audio treatment on computers became possible, i mean processable and affordable.
It's probably around these days, something like 2002, that I made this short trial track.

The first time you have to deal with software instruments, plug-ins and hardware devices is a new exercise in term of blending sounds coming from different materials.
The low pitched guitar sample's sync is a bit jerky, the software drums (Waldorf attack emulation I think) are too clean compared to the rest, but somehow the track keep a charm, drumming is sharp and quite efficient after the breakdown. And also the profound groove of a contracello...

Sunny cloud day

Machine talk

2009-04-23T14:54:00.015+07:00

Techno tune from 2007, crepuscular accents and machine funky.
Talk to me

Backup technologies

2009-04-22T19:30:00.030+07:00

All begin with a dirty minidisc sample of a friend playing on n'goni, this fabulous sounding african lute. Then the beat is soon joined by a warm CS80 pad and some MS20 bleeps.

Traditional flute and vocals samples come from a Lao's tribe recording, the piece was obtained thanks to Vientiane's Laos national library, traditional music archiving project.

The archiving project came from the sad constat of seeing the old traditional and ritual musicians, selling their unvaluable manufactured instruments to buy guitars and keyboards, as playing traditional music seems has been to the younger generations who will prefer to entertain themselves with pop formated standards.

Ambiguous modernity (live)

Undefined object

2009-04-22T18:30:00.021+07:00

Ambiant piece composed in 2005 with one layer of the CS1X Yamaha synth, in a couple of hour.
Sedna was once, for a couple of monthes, the tenth planet discovered. But it's small size and unformal orbit made it relegated, as Pluto, to the status of trans-Neptunian object. So now we keep going with 8 planets, but various things are still floating around there...
Within its stellar range, Sedna is still one of my preferred productions.

Sedna

Trilaterale anthem

2009-04-22T14:01:00.024+07:00

Latest track i've produced. 808's beat based, a dark jupiter-synth melody and I added this accapella from an obscure experimental but valuable 80's band "Club of Rome", after which I named the track.
"Club of Rome" of course refers to the think thank group founded in 1968 that gathers economists, industrials and politics that had to deal at this time with the restraints limiting the growth, as oil depletion. Some has linked this group with Bilderberg group and other networks often qualified as hidden power or new world order...

Club of Rome