Sonography of a Lost City

City Sonic Invention

"I promise Mr. Adamson. I w-won't breathe a w-w-word...to anyone"

 So begins a rapid descent into the viral underbelly of a city gone to grime; a dystopia fuelled by fear, regret, and the shattered dreams of lost, damaged souls fulfilling macabre ends.


 Moss Side Story chronicles this narrative through a brilliantly orchestrated score. Spanning grimy ambient, beat-driven electronica, high tension strings, disembodied screams and sonic city detritus, this soundtrack chills your spine.

 Just like Badawi's The Unspeakable and John Zorn's Spillane, Moss Side Story uses a wide tonal palette from the orchestral to the sublime. A broad mixture of  styles and sounds - 'spy' music, broadcast transmissions, r&b, big beat dirges, funereal vamps - presents the listener with a kaleidoscope of ear candy.

 A nod to an earlier era of  film noir, 'Sounds of the Big House,' could comfortably fit into any imaginary bordello, what with blues-tinged Hammond organ and distorted drum machine patterns. The inner-city blues vibes continue on 'Suck on the Honey of Love', a track featuring last-call bar piano coupled with boozy choir fills.

 Like all those who compose soundtracks without a film, Adamson excels at keeping the narrative tight and compelling through careful, logical edits that help rivet the listener's attention span. Take 'Auto Destruction', a fine collage of  flanged guitar, crashing orchestral chimes and squalling saxophone, all underpinned by metallic percussion. 

 The cartoonish 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World' reminds one of those furious Warner Brothers soundtracks by Carl Stalling, complete with hyper string passages and sappy refrains. Indeed, Moss Side Story owes a debt to that legend and the films of David Lynch, which gives it a contemporary feel that's almost timeless.

 Dive into this small masterpiece here.

Painkiller - Original Soundtrack

 The history of inventive FPS video game music seems to lean toward electro-fury of the most aggressive kind. Quake, Unreal Tournament, Doom - all these games deliver soundtracks that frame the hyper-narrative of gaming adrenaline. And some of the best soundtracks forge precision breakbeats, powerhouse drumming, shredded guitar riffage, titanic synth patches and razor sharp edits, like Painkiller.

 Speedo death metal is the thrust here, yet with more nimble percussion and clever studio jive. If you're still of fan of Nine Inch Nails, Fugazi, Front 242 and other industrial pounders, Painkiller gives you a fix in succinct 2-3 minute packages.

 'Morph In' combines metal chords with breakbeat fills that fit into the overall kitschy sonic formula. 'Kill My Boss' might be the most representative track, skillfully mashing up reverse-processed guitar, drum & bass accents and damnbient keyboards.

 'Cathedral Fight' spikes the rising crescendos of airy synthesizer and Van Halen-like boogie guitar that'll make any party animal drink into a blissed out stupor. On 'Painkiller,' there's even a decent Ozzy Osbourne imitator. Composed and performed by metal outfit, Mech, they're just one of apparently over 170 Polish underground metal bands. And that's fitting since some of most outrageous video game franchises come out of Eastern Europe (Serious Sam, Dead Island, etc.)

Check it out and put on your leather bootstraps here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL793A47E18EE83DB9

Chris Foss: An Appreciation

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  After collecting comics, watching horror/sci-fi movies and reading fan magazines (esp. Cinefantastique), I began collecting some of my favourite artists through collected editions of their work. Published in 1978, 21st Century Foss collects Chris Foss' ground-breaking sci-fi conceptions of hulking interstellar ships, automated planet scavengers, asteroid defence installations and cities, massive cargo ships, and raging battles between lethal space ship weaponry.

Foss was real deal for science fiction authors and visionaries in the 1970s; he illustrated book covers for Issac Asimov, E.E. "Doc" Smith and others; and did storyboard conceptions for Dune and Alien (never used, H.R. Giger won the job). Although majestic in scope, Foss' illustrations show the wear and tear of space travel and the unique human stamp on technology. Hatches, antennae, cabling and various devices lend a gritty texture to these moving monstrosities.

Look at the illustration The Machine in Shaft 10. You see human figures meshing into the fabric of these leviathans of technology:

Influence on Star Wars' Death Star?

Astronaut-workers bound down the asteroid surface and emerge from a tunnel; observers peer through windows of the Death Star-like orbiting station. Indeed, Foss planted the idea of space technology as a herculean endeavor, with all the nuts-and-bolts, yet undeniably human.

Some illustrations emphasize maintenance in progress, like the ship lowering a huge bomb into an interstellar silo. Others make a connection between ancient and modern space travel as in Landing Ground at Nazca. Away and Beyond shows gnarly, spire-like towers in a far off settlement.

Earth is Room Enough nods towards the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Foss also lent his talents for dynamic action in a series of WWII illustrations. You're overwhelmed by his kinetic renderings of submarine and aircraft battles.

Before CGI, Chris Foss was the master who would influence a generation of future special effects artists and genre illustrators. And probably had a major impact on the development of more realistic conceptions of space technology, warts and all.

Tommy Four Seven: Corebeat Drilling

Beats Etched In Stone: New Cuneform

Fully caustic and unrelenting, the lonely beats of Primate mine pulses complete with dust, debris, and cavernous echoings. Along the minimal techno vibe, Tommy Four Seven creates a kind of sonic black hole, especially with the opener 'Sevals'. That track signals all the elements at his command: exquisite details surround each deep beat, allowing the listener to shed all expectations.

'Talus' brings his Gothic vibe to the fore; indeed, the cathedral-like production and vocals suggest a purgatorial opera. A big beat jam accompanied by modulated, wistful voices on 'G' continues the cold comfort, yet the listener warms up to Tommy's sense of dramatic proportion and rising cadences.

It's only by the 4th track, 'Ratu,' that pounds out a club-friendly house vibe; no doubt perfect for those late night chemical ravers with focused attention spans. Sure, it's primitive like the title suggests, but Tommy works it like a sonic paleontologist divining new medals of creation. For more, the Create Learn Realize label offers tons of podcasts, videos, concert dates and more. Props for digital primitives!

5 Dark Vibe CDs: Perfect Reading Companions

One of my many pleasures involves finding and listening to dark harmony music. Mostly in the electronic/electronica vein, these five recordings add atmosphere and depth to any readers looking to ratch up the fear factor:

1.  Tim Hecker: Radio Amour. A delirious mixture of environmental recordings, micro-transmissions, instrumental snippets and tintinabular etchings, Radio Amour offers a wistful, contemplative experience. This is ambient music with a gentle pulse, demanding more than just background attention. Recommended for: fantasy stories.
2. Dark Matter: Multiverse 2004-2009. Comprised of Bristol's dark beat alchemists in dubstep, breakbeats, intelligent techno and other mutations, Dark Matter shreads your incus, burrowing into your head with nervy electrics and off-kilter rhymes. Recommended for: any zombie apocalypse story.
3. Bucolic: Dzyan Blood. A personal favourite of mine, this is one of the most accomplished recordings form the sadly defunct BSI Records. In every sense of the term, Dzyan Blood is spot-on Gothic Dub. A echo chamber of a 1,000 mirrors, Bucolic drops dusty, almost industrial vibes with a ear for impending doomy drama. Recommended for: classic/vintage horror with vampires, revenants, ghosts, ectoplasm, necromancers and witch doctors.
4. Prince Charming: Fantastic Voyage. Part of the so-called 'illbient/downtempo' school, Prince Charming offers a cosmic narrative, complete with doom dub instrumentals, mutant cha-cha, hyper spoken word jams, creepy fake jazz and other transgressions. Recommended for: weird  superhero stories, end-of-world and biogenetic sci-fi.
5. Push Button Objects: Dirty Dozen. A totally absorbing mixture of hip-hop rythmns and frosty synths, Dirty Dozen fills your ear with tantalizing hooks, spooky keyboards and gentle dirges. Perhaps not strong from start-to-finish, this one defintely fits into any Halloween bash or as a soundtrack for lonely Goths. Recommended for: existential hobos looking for a reprieve; sci-fi involving identity switching, time travel and parallel dimensions.

And remember, Keep on Creeping on!

Limitless: Fun Pulp Sci-Fi

Basically a contemporary,sci-fi version of the theme of medically-assisted hyer-intelligence from Flowers For Algernon, Limitless serves up a glossy, campy take on smart drugs, along with the usual narrative involving the apex of personal achievement: corporate stardom.  A failed writer in a creative rut accidentally finds and takes NZT, a laboratory drug bestowing extraordinary intelligence and learning ability. Abandoning writing, Eddy takes up the role of a guru stock market genus; learning languages at an alarming rate; absorbing economic data and creating spot-on predictions; and reaping the bacchanalian benefits.

Limitless offers a kitschy escape, a tale that leaves nothing after viewing, despite its happy ending suggesting the hallucinatory side effects, and likelihood of death from NZT, can be reverse engineered or simply provides a learning boost in the post-addiction period (I couldn't tell which). But it's blast, the kind of sci-fi that reminds me of The Island: a stylish, sci-fi B-movie with an exciting action narrative.

Down the Road: Rescue or Eradication?

It's often suggested that FEMA was lukewarm in  responding to relief for Hurricane Katrina victims; the presence of an aggressive militia (many Blackwater mercenaries) contributed to civilian abuse; and the alleged militarization of U.S. disaster relief made matters worse.

It's little wonder that along comes a zombie story that takes this narrative or conspiracy on. Bowie Ibarra in On The Road  launches his survival tale through the lens of George Zaragosta, a skeptic, a teacher with little patience for empty rhetoric. Learning that FEMA criminalizes citizens who refuse evacuation to official refugee camps, he acidly remarks, "Helpful FEMA Centers, sounds like an oxymoron to me."

As he begins to trek from Austin to San Uvalde, George realizes that a confused FEMA military force poses just as much of a threat as the newly undead. With warnings from FEMA that "Non-compliance will result in neutralization," he makes plans to escape the wretched conditions at a FEMA camp. Soon, he meets up with a survival community with same disdain for these 'rescuers.' Indeed, many in the compound allege that FEMA's job is to prune the US population to enable reconstruction. That's the real horror of Down the Road: in any widespread disaster leading to civil breakdown, government is the last entity to be trusted. From the good people at Permuted Press.