Leslie Shatz and the scattering of my undead brainsssshhhh...

Leslie in studio..maybe recording pool table' sounds??!

In a moment of boredom at my parent’s house back in Italy I turned on the TV and started zapping through the tragedy of the Sky channels. Suddenly everything stopped and I snapped out of the room and found myself underneath a shower of broken glasses cutting through my brains. This is kind of what I felt the first time I watched the shower scene from Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. Without taking away any credits from Van Sant’s amazing visuals, what makes this scene so special to me is the sound design and the resulting perfect synesthetic marriage between the image and the sound.  Searching through the imdb database I soon found out that the man behind this sonic magic is a regular Van Sant’s collaborator called Leslie Shatz. One of his first jobs was as dialogue editor for ‘Apocalypse Now’ and the year after for ‘Star Wars: the empire strikes back’. Since then it seems like he worked in loads of productions that I really enjoyed. As sound designer for The assassination of Jesse James, Gomorrah, The Road, Elephant, Dracula, and only as sound re-recordist for others, which are definitely not in my top 10 best films ever (Rambo 4, Van Helsing, Hidalgo). Finally I’m watching Paranoid Park from beginning to end for the first time. Because last time I started watching more than half way through, many things now start to make sense, but hey! If you didn’t watch it yet try to do it from the shower scene and then rewind to the beginning the second time around. So here’s a video of the scene. Enjoy. Ps Crank up the volume pleeease!!! Signing off..

..embers..

I read recently a dissertation from Paul O'Brien, a student that finished the BA Sound Arts course last year. I got to say that apart for being a well organized and thoughtful thesis, it was particularly pleasant to read and, without wanting to sound too lame or sentimental..well..here we go..yes..TOUCHING. Reading this brought me to his website Hearing Beckett, where I found more information on his work. What really got to me was how all his work through the course of his last year at school results so homogeneous and..here we go again..'clean'. 

'Solution Of Continuity' was his Final Major Project for his degree.

 It is an installation that does not use any sound..only dust as he argues. It kind of relates with certain thoughts on my dissertation, in particular the recorded voice of someone dead. And the value that piece of tape or vinyl or data on a hard disk can gain with time -commercial value or spiritual or sentimental or..who knows.. 

I know it doesn't make sense to you reader now but I'll try to make it more clear as soon is clearer to me but yeah! sound installations with no sounds! need to do some research on that! I leave you with some words from Mr O'Brien himself. I'm sure it'll make more sense.

"Solution of continuity is a silent sculptural work inspired by Beckett’s stage play, ‘That Time’. ‘Solution of continuity’ is a medical term defined as, ‘A division of bones or of soft parts that are normally continuous’. Beckett harnesses the term in his stage directions for the play to describe the constant flow of words from three ‘moments of the same voice’, proceeding ‘without solution of continuity’. This idea is turned on its head in the piece wherein the two ‘normally continuous’ spools are literally separated, thus there is ‘not a sound’, ‘nothing only dust’."

BA3 Show 2010 - Paul O'Brien - Solution of Continuity from Sound Arts & Design @ LCC on Vimeo.

Publish Post

Video Ideas for my band The Shit..

The Shit!!! Here we go..

This is my neighbour’s car. COOL FIRST CLASS MACHINE HEY!!!

I want to ask him if I can put it on some kind of bumpers –I don’t know what I’m talking about at the moment but it’ll come to me-

I want some huge screen around it with the projections of black and white images of the sun bursting crazy or other freaky alien images (check my link to Semiconductor -'brilliant noise' and 'Black Rain' videos- to see what I'm talking about)as the background visible from the windshields etc..

Marion -drummer- should sit on the back but leaning towards the front seats.

Leo -bass- on the driver seat and yours truly next to him.

When complete, I would love to have someone translating the song’s lyrics in sign language on a little box at the left of the screen – a bit like that one that you see on late night TV programs..

Think Tarantino's Death Proof..

ps in case something bad happens to me like death or something my last wish is a drive on the back of this evil thing.