Music Monday: Bytes as Droplets of Water
The film and music are simply two different expressions of the same ideas, the same core theme.
Christian Fennesz and I have a number of common interests, in particular an appreciation for the Fender Jazzmaster – a quirky but versatile, one of a kind instrument – and a love of melodic ambient electronic music.
Jon Wozencroft and I, too, have a number of common interests, in particular a love of abstract film and a deep interest in the interplay of light and moving water.
All of which is simply to say that when I saw that Fennesz and Wozencroft had released Liquid Music II on the multimedia project Touch a few days ago, there was little chance I was not going to jump in with both feet.
The Liquid Music project is, itself, over twenty years old. The film, in its initial version, was made to accompany Fennesz’s performances on his 2001 tour in support of his breakthrough album Endless Summer. A performance at the Brighton Garden Arts Centre consisting of material from the album was released on a USB memory stick in 2012.
The memory stick was necessary because, in 2005, a DVD release had been planned and scrapped due to the DVD media lacking the high resolution which would make the film’s moving water appear properly.
The DVD cut was also longer because it was to be paired with an improvised live performance from Fennesz’s 2004 appearance at the Norberg Festival in Sweden. It is this cut which finally sees the light of day as Liquid Music II.
Fennwesz’s music is unique, in that it is simultaneously noisy and glitchy, on the one hand, and unquestionably made, in part, with a guitar on the other. Furthermore, for all the noise, there is an insistence on melody and musical movement that many artists working to some degree with noise, certainly those before him, either avoided or had no interest in.
That the audio portion of Liquid Music II is improvised is a triumph. Familiar elements flitter in and out and wash over the listener. It flows.
The accompanying film does just what it should: It provides a visual version of the sound. It accents and it highlights. What might not have sounded like rain initially takes on raindrop-like tones when the notion of rain is suggested by the film.
Wozencroft makes excellent use of focus, or the lack thereof. Often what we see is not so much the water, but what is in the water, and the way water distorts and augments the things with which it interacts. You see waves in waves in waves, fleeting momentary bubbles and drops, prismatic reflections.
And it is in this that you discover that the pairing of music and film was very, very intentional: Out of all this digitally distorted and mangled sound there is beauty and harmony. The film and music are simply two different expressions of the same ideas, the same core theme.
This music is not for everyone, but it comes with my highest recommendation and is best consumed in the dark and loud.
Below is an extract from the first Liquid Music release.
Liquid Music II is available here.
