Hikikomori 5
Lastly we have Hikikomori 5. Nice way to end the week.
Hikikomori 4
The final film for us to complete - Hikikomori 4 - took shape when a particular focus was discovered near the end. This allowed a certain amount of re-cutting to elevate it's presence and discover something buried deep in the frame.
Hikikomori 3
This film was released quite a bit ago, but with the new films coming out this week it seemed fitting to re-highlight the first two for the sake of continuity, and because why not?
As said before, the point of this work with John has always been to create unique pieces that would stand alone, but within the context of the larger structure create something valuable. Hikikomori and the larger Yokai Trilogy is becoming something quite wondrous and unique. We are hoping to do more with it, but this is the start.
With that said take a look (or re-look) at Hikikomori 3.
Hikikomori 2
The point of this work with John has always been to create unified wholes for the entire album without sacrificing the standalone quality of each piece of music and each film. Hikikomori proved to push this to a certain limit. There is a complexity to the music that in some ways pushed the visual away and required more from the films to justify their existence.
With that said take a look at Hikikomori 2.
Hikikomori 1
Happy to say we have finally completed films for the second album in John's Yokai Trilogy Hikikomori. We got a couple films out at the time of the film's release, but these last three films have taken us a while. We will release each of the last three films here first this week.
We present to you Hikikomori 1.
Weekly Recap - Minnesota Public Radio
This week was really busy in the land of Minnesota Public Radio with new interviews coming out every day. Monday brought about an interview with the great Daniel Hart whose work was covered last year in a piece about under-recognized scores of 2013. His upcoming work, both for the film and the record, is fantastic and he offers great insight into how he does what he does.
On Tuesday we put out an interview with Christopher Lennertz whose work you have almost certainly heard. As discussed in the piece, he has worked with an incredible amount of gold standard composers and it offers great insight into how his stylings are becoming entwined with modern-day comedy.
Wednesday was a surprise with a really quick interview of Mark Henry Phillips from Serial fame. His work is a huge part of why that podcast series has become so popular. With insanely fast production on every episode, he didn't have time to try and make things 'perfect' and that restriction adds to a sensibility that greatly benefited the show's reception.
Lastly, something different. Our friend Silas Hite was in town last year and we were able to get him to sit down for a terrific interview that became the newest episode of Top Score; Emily Reese's terrific podcast that is working really hard to broaden how we think about video games and music. Please take a listen and share it around.
Next week we should finally have three new films for the John Barner album (sssh, don't tell him. we have as yet to let him know) and Hanan is kicking into high gear with shooting of the music video taking place shortly.
Stay tuned. Keep a look out over at Minnesota Public Radio and Happy New Year to everyone! It's so far gotten off to a great start at CyNar.
A Thousand Words on Composing the Score to KliKt
The following is what John Barner wrote about completing the score to KliKt.
A Thousand Words on Composing the Score to KliKt
by John Barner
It is a rare thing to sit and write about composing a score. Rarer still is to do so without some recourse either to describing the recording process or the style of the film itself. The latter is, in the case of Klikt, the easier of the two, and can be dispensed with most economically. Klikt is, to me anyway, a film firmly ensconced in a cinematic legacy that has close ties to the earliest exponents of absurdist or Surrealist cinema, such as Dulac and Artaud’s La Coquille et le clergyman (1928) and Buñuel and Dalí’s Un chien andalou (1929), and the more recent “budget” tradition of supernatural thriller and early horror genre films of the 1950’s (the work of Ed Wood easily being the most recognizable—and critically lauded—of these). But to engage in these kind of comparisons is ultimately a limiting exercise, as KliKt also strikes me as having strong stylistic ties to the early films of Morris Engel, juxtaposing its absurdist anachronisms with a quotidian “realism,” i.e., “real time.” Again, any viewer wishing to peg down just where KliKt is coming from stylistically through adding this comparison to an already heady mix may find themselves just as stymied as one who would dismiss it out of hand as simply an absurdist homage or Surrealist-inspired film experiment. My own sense of unease with the all-too-easy labeling of KliKt’s style is precisely what led me to develop a unique recording process in scoring the film, which requires a bit of explanation.
I had seen an early short film version of KliKt prior the score being commissioned, and knew it to be a silent film, albeit a noisy silent film. The diagetic sounds that dominate the film, that act almost as characters-in-themselves, are constantly bombarding the audience, especially the omnipresent sound of a whirring fan, doors slamming and opening, the lazy mechanical din of a contemporary scanner/printer, and, most of all, the sound of the archaic manual typewriter that acts as the protagonist’s companion/adversary throughout the film. In considering recording music for KliKt, I knew that I would, much like the film’s protagonist, have to wrestle with these noisy intrusions, to strike a balance with them in producing a score that built and applied dramatic tension, engaged directly with the action on the screen, and operated equally as foreground and background. This last common duty of non-diagetic music proved especially difficult in composing the score for KliKt. In the full-length version of the film, the act of repetition constantly shifts audience attentions—the tension is always being applied somewhere different in each of the successive “days” of the film, although it would seem as if “nothing is happening” internally to suggest such a narrative advance. Producing music that would have to simultaneously appear not to be moving the action of the film along, but rather “freezing” each moment to allow the viewer to catch what was different this time around required an eschewing of some common elements of recorded music. Melodies, for example, needed to be slight, and rhythms had to capture the repetitiveness of the action, and not run counter to highly repetitive diagetic sound cues (like the typewriter). Screening a rough cut of the film, I immediately instituted three simple (though a little startling, at the time) “rules” that would govern the recording process. The first was that the music would be entirely electronic, with sampling of live instruments. The second was that the samples needed to be rhythmic, rather than melodic. Finally, samples could not be more than ten seconds in length, to ensure that the music would mirror the mechanical nature of the diagetic sounds heard in the film.
I had been experimenting for some time with creating a series of themes using only Nord Lead and (in at least one instance) Fairlight synthesizer tones recorded at variable lengths and layered, one atop the other, either backwards or forwards, and then married to live instrument samples recorded especially for the film (of piano, cello, clarinet, banjo, and, as heard in the trailer for the full length film, the internal sounds of an antique grandfather clock) to provide a rhythmic accompaniment. The result diminished the more characteristic sounds of the synthesizers while retaining the overall tonal quality, making the loops less beholden to the “glitch” inherent in much of contemporary looped electronic music (such as dance music or hip hop). In the final version of KliKt, these themes were further edited into the film by the director, Garrett Tiedemann, shifting their entrance and exit, with each of the successive “days” or perspectival shifts. Again, repetition of key ebbs and flows were crucial to advancement of the narrative. This is in marked difference to a film with a simplistic narrative through-line, wherein the music would begin or end concomitant to a particular moment or “cue” in the action. Given the subtlety of the action in KliKt, and the inherent variance in the presence or absence of such cues from one “day” to the next, the overarching mood to the score was one of lurking, or lying-in-wait. A traditional dénouement common to the thriller is a noisy one, and KliKt here is no exception, so the music is less about emphasizing that the door has been slammed, but, rather, accentuating the length of time spent considering when that
slam will happen.
To conclude, I think it is safe to say that KliKt is a difficult film. It requires considerable attention on the part of the viewer and consistently raises the level of complexity both in terms of what is seen and how one interprets what one sees. From the position of composer, it is my sincere hope that I have not only aided and abetted the stylistic choices on the part of the director and those involved with the film’s production, but also offered, through music, a helping hand to the audience on their journey to understanding.
KliKt Reconsidering
“...a more challenging and forward-looking example of current cinema...a strong and distinctive work...”
It's been a few years since the experiment KliKt was completed. After a long journey through a couple iterations it came out and disappeared online just as quickly. Always past and future place rather than present, it's yet to really find it's audience.
Originally shot as a short silent film, it lived that way for a long time. After Trickery Mimicry was made and had it's run through festivals there was a question of what next.
It's unclear how the original footage of KliKt came to be re-watched, but at some point it happened. And with the clarity of Trickery Mimicry pushing it along, a new film was born from the ashes of the past. Something with more depth, richness of detail, and clarity of consideration.
Watching Camden Toy is revelatory. A one of a kind actor whose provided two uniquely brilliant characters for CyNar. It's difficult not to watch him; consider the thoughts he so wears on his sleeve without words or common tools of communication. It was impossible to not provide KliKt another opportunity. Impossible not to dive deeper down the rabbit-hole of a story so evasive and overwhelming.
It's a silent film by motivation, but not execution. With John R. Barner's brilliant score as the backbone and additional characters - as well as inanimate objects given focus as characters - providing surrounding motivations, KliKt became a portal to another universe. A vision of reality not so distant from our own, but just far enough to be unclear.
“I wish I knew, in one way, what to say, because part of the work’s strength it seems to me is a certain resistance to interpretation. I mean, sure, it’s lucid, and its narrative can be extracted, but more even than many - most? - movies, you seem to be trafficking in a certain spot where there’s no other way to say it. Like Lynch, or (one of my favorite films) Polanski circa Repulsion: it’s not so much ‘dream-like’ as a kind of pure land (mind?) scape.”
At the time of release there were those who followed what it was attempting to accomplish. People like Lily Emeralde and Emma Dyllan from Phosphorescence Magazine and Matthew Specktor who wrote wonderful thoughts and considerations that presented KliKt as something to be discovered.
There were also many supporters like Kathy McTavish who responded to the film with their own creative works as review of the experience. Offering reconsiderations entwined with the original considerations themselves.
For a time there was a place where all this material was located, but it's not really available anymore. And it should be. The film itself and the energy it instigated should be presented some way for people to find. So, we're collecting these things here. Maybe it will incite a revisiting. Maybe the life KliKt has yet to have can be found. The next couple posts will be responses to the film as written by others either involved in the creative act, like John Barner, or those who were on the front lines witnessing the development.
It's a chronicle of sorts. Value judgments of something before it reached any sort of conclusion. But, before you understand where all that is coming from, you should really just watch the movie.
Yokai Trilogy
So it's Thanksgiving 2014 and time to give thanks. It's been a busy year for CyNar and American Residue with a lot of new material and a lot more to come in short order. What we are thinking most about right now though is this trilogy almost complete.
John Barner has been working an a very big project this year. With two albums already available, the third album is going to be called Funayūrei. It's an exciting adventure soon to be complete and we are waiting with as much anticipation as you regarding it's sound and vibe.
We'll keep you posted on its release with album art, expected videos, etc. We need to of course complete the second stage in video land, but those are short coming and by the end of the year part two should be complete.
When the third installment is released we have big plans. The entire arc will be titled Yōkai and with it we are going to produce a whole new collection of all three acts with some additional material only available in the release entire. We have also altered the site a bit to reflect this project entire and you can find it under the video section titled Yōkai Trology. We'll keep updating this section to better your involvement as time allows.
Take care on this holiday of gathering. Give thanks and listen to the world around you.
Cheers!
The Satin Cowboy (also known as Silas Hite)
We've had a good friend in Silas Hite for a while now. Appreciator of the work (both visually and musically); we've been going back and forth with ideas, ways of being, what in the world can we make of all this material put out in the world.
Recently, in conversation, something new came about. Silas uses the handle Satin Cowboy for various social media handles, but it was unknown that this was more than a handle. It's also a band name - a presence. Beyond his impressive experience scoring film, television, and video games he's released records. Check out his Bandcamp page for a bit of what we're talking.
And, as luck would have it, there's more. He was working on it yesterday - along with some super secret, hush hush, material. So, keep your eyes and ears open. You never know where he might pop up.
Hanan - No Face (and those records/films by John and Garrett)
So, what's next on the CyNar docket?
We are still working on what's becoming an impressive art collaborative between Garrett and John with John's in development trilogy of albums (first with Aokigahara, second with Hikikomori) . So far each album has inspired a film/music video for each track. We were lucky enough to release each visual with the song of the day release for Aokigahara, but Hikikomori has been a bit tougher. The songs have evolved and and by default the visuals must. Two films are available now, but the other three are in production and should be available soon.
We'll use this developing blog scenario to let you know first hand.
In addition to this though we've recently made some new friends at Inspirus Records and are happy to announce a union! The band Hanan and Inspirus are teaming up with CyNar to produce a music video for their song No Face off their terrific new album Sonder! This is really exciting and the idea being developed is top notch. A bit weird, a bit beautiful; totally the playground where CyNar digs.
Along with the new album we'll be covering some more documentary style filming of them in studio to help provide a glimpse of their workplace. To what end we are not yet sure, but something will arise.
We are really excited about this developing collaboration and look forward to sharing the results as soon as they are available. Until then, cheers!