Category: Music

Below you’ll find a new video, an homage to the great KMRU. His ambient music is stunning, and I have found myself listening to it for many, many hours. The music video was created under fair use. The footage is from a recent trip to Copper Creek in the Olympic National Forest. As a bonus to the video, I have decided to include some new GIFs, created with Resolve and QGifer (a new app I’ve been flexing with).

Additional GIFs (recommended download):

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After some toiling across software platforms, I have finalized another project: Dunn Gardens (2021). This project includes the following:

• Two full videos on YouTube: a silent video featuring original footage revealing the transitions of flowers from black and white to color; the same video with an added auditory bonus of an original composition of noise/music/etc.
• Two iterations of the audio track posted on Bandcamp: an album as one track and an album as split tracks. Splitting up the tracks follows in the footsteps of other sound artists I admire, and is the first time I’ve decided to craft smaller somethings out of a larger, original something else in Ableton.

For fun, here are the still images used in the track images in Bandcamp, screenshots from the video revealing the black and white beginnings of each flower shot:

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Using a new GoPro and cutting across the snow mile after mile, I recorded the Taylor River video below. The sound is a “live soundtrack” that I created while rewatching the video, experimenting with Komplete Kontrol, Ableton Live II, Massive, and Erosion+Distort+Reverb effects. I appreciated how Davinci and Ableton worked well together, and how everything ended up fitting despite some major hiccups in the process–namely with understanding some of the fundamental recording requirements in Ableton 11. The song can be found on Bandcamp here.

The track linked below, Cherry Creek Falls, features another recent track composed in Ableton 11. The music, composed of two individual tracks, was applied to footage taken from Cherry Creek Falls outside of Duvall, Washington in March 2021. This was the first abstract video I created with the Express (free) edition of Hitfilm, an app that’s very similar to Adobe Premiere (without the incredible cost). With all of the difference blending applied, the video rendering and exporting resulted in some pixelation and otherwise gritty results, but I have decided to cough that up to the software limitations. Overall, I’m still a fan of the psychedelic qualities in this work. I also find the slowed down, close-up of the falls to be a bit hard to watch–perhaps inducing motion sickness? In a way, there’s a surreal quality to this negative effect–one I couldn’t ignore or remove when I first discovered it.

The track is available on Bandcamp, and the video (which includes some waterfall leads) is available on YouTube. (Or watch below:)

My first foray into sheer noise, performative noise, and one of my first tracks in Ableton 11. “Inside” is a track created while watching the New French Extremity horror film of 2007 (À l’intérieur). After finalizing this experimental track, I decided to apply it to the segment of the film that inspired the composition. Note my application of fair use here is the first in my history of video and audio work.

Note that the video is incredibly graphic, and the violent content may not be suitable for all viewers or viewing environments.

Track’s on Bandcamp.

Vid’s on YouTube and below:

I have just finalized two incredibly strange audio tracks, accompanied/carried by two incredibly strange video tracks.

The first features footage recorded in Ellensburg, Washington–specifically the lovely Irene Rinehart Waterfront Park. I don’t really have an explanation for the audio (which is probably for the best, honestly). I will say that I did include the waterfall’s audio track last minute, which adds a certain bass/ambient effect to the otherwise crippling synths. You can watch the video on YouTube (or via the embed below) and you can listen to the audio on Bandcamp.

The second piece features footage from Ancient Lakes, an area I recently returned to after a couple of years when I camped there with some artist friends. The footage has been heavily manipulated but you may encounter some high desert water features and flora if you look carefully. I have also opted into using a visual noise effect, which ended up getting pixelated in the export (so I’m happy!). The audio was similarly created in Ableton, and features a previously-unused rain recording from the December trip to Friday Harbor Labs/San Juan Island. I decided to use some background panning for the first time in a track, which might become a new staple for me. You can watch the video on YouTube as well, and the audio is also available on Bandcamp.

In what has become a new 2021 tradition, I have completed my next video and music work, though I hesitate to call it a “music video.” Relying on Komplete Kontrol’s Mikro Prism, and a ton of effects, I have found a certain harmony with the noise I’m turning up. I suppose harmony in this regard concerns my own mental well-being, and the joy I get out of arrangement/composition and listening after the fact. It has always been my goal to create tracks that resonate with me after, that are akin to what I would want to listen to in the genre. I get closer.

The audio track can be found on my Bandcamp page here.

As for the video, it is hopefully the last video I have to create using Premiere. I have a HitFilm app installed and rearing to go for the next project. The footage is taken directly from Biscayne Bay, located in/adjacent to Miami, Florida. In perhaps the most non-Biscayne way possible, I have used certain mesmerizations to illuminate patterns and restlessness of this shallow waterscape.

The video can be found on YouTube here, and is also below.

A new musical track and video have been published on YouTube and Bandcamp. Kachess Lake is a track based on an experience snowshoeing at said Cascadian lake in January 2021. The track is dynamically different in terms of tone and construction from other recent tracks. An experiment in layers, chords, dissonance, Massive, and reverb+EQ, I have attempted to slightly slow down my production sequence with this project.

As for the video, the footage was taken directly from Kachess Lake. The quirky, pixelated video effects were added in the default Windows 10 “Video Editor” app.

My continuation continues. It persists. The audio, the derangement, the seeking. In “Waves Track,” I continue the ongoing intensities I encountered in “Cloud Track,” but this time I have gone further, dived deeper, made my mania clearer.

“Waves Track” can be watched via the music video below, which features three clips overlaid in a subtle but entrancing intention. The three clips were all recorded from a recent trip to Rialto Beach, on the Olympic Peninsula.

As with “Cloud Track,” “Waves Track” is on Bandcamp. The description says it all (or nothing):

“Inspired by Merzbow, Sonic Youth, Oneohtrix Point Never, with a general nostalgia for noise and industrial.”

Watch the music video on YouTube, in a soothing 1080p, below.

Sometimes experimentation crosses boundaries. Historically I have divided much of my literary, audio, and visual/video work categorically to allow for sense-making and efficiencies in output. This has been machine-like and in some ways has kept me from going further into the “interdisciplinary” realms many artists work within. Last year’s videos Boulder River Aphorisms, Oceanic Triptych, and Thorough Water all combined some of the approaches listed above, but I have never looked at my experimental music/audio work connecting with video so fluidly. Bring in the “music video” concept, and some new hardware technology, and I’ve started to explore a little beyond my previous works.

Below is “Cloud Track,” which is a “song” created for a video. The music uses no field recordings, though that is something I hope to do with whatever I work on next; instead utilizing samples and instruments from digital libraries. The video footage is from some time-lapses I took recently on San Juan Island. Even the most abstract moments of the “Cloud Track” video are derivative from that footage, using some diffusion blending and my typical manipulation of brightness and contrast settings. It’s clearly an extension of my GIF work, as well (surprising? not surprising?).

As for the audio? I’ve added it to Bandcamp, and as stated there, it’s “[m]y first foray into leaving field recordings for digital libraries of samples and instruments. Inspired by a couple of time-lapse videos recording in the San Juan Islands, and the music of Gas and Einstürzende Neubauten.

I’m proud to say it’s available in 1440p, too–something I intend to do with all my upcoming short videos. Enjoy!