"We are hearing only a section of an infinite sound."
I know I've posted already today but I just found this and had to post it.
I have been in love with "Wonder of All the World" by The Australian dance/electronica band Severed Heads for some time.
I love Severed Heads generally. But the first time I heard this song/piece of sound, it made me weep uncontrollably. It stirred me so intensely. Made me think of time and death and life. I didn't quite know why...
It's just a series of distorted violins and operatic singing after all.
Well I've just found the video that the Severed Heads guy Tom Ellard recently made for it, and it sums up precisely the sort of sorrow and joy combined thing I felt when I heard the audio so perfectly that I don't know what to do with myself watching it. I have such a thing for looking at old photos and video footage whilst listening to this song anyway. I'm totally spun out... overwhelmed....insane with the rush of...
I knew Ellard was making a video for "Wonder of the World" because he said on his blog that he intended to play the song at live shows and he said he would put it up online when he was done playing the live dates, so I was waiting for it, but seems I slacked off because he put it up a while ago now and I only just checked now and yeah....yeah...
Seconds in I was weeping uncontrollably.
Now I cannot stop weeping.
All those jubilant faces of people who are dead now, slow, and the sound and then the swing with the child on it.
waaaaa I can't take it it's meddling with my soul.
Just FUUUUUUCK
As someone on youtube said of it.
"they are all ghosts now as we will be"
See also the beauty of Ellard's notes on the piece...
"The music is built on a single sample, a small moment of orchestral music captured from the radio, and played with one finger. The sound plays forwards and then reaching the end reverses, playing backwards to the start where it begins again. This alternating loop holds a melody but by constant repetition and reversal the individual notes are blurred into a drone -- a single complex sustained note. The loop fades in very slowly at the start of the piece and fades away again just as stealthily, implying that the music has no start or end and we are hearing only a section of an infinite sound.
...
The lines are from the 1927 musical Show Boat, music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. This was the first musical play with a serious intent, and is justly honoured for it. But until this year I actually had no idea where the voices originated, as they were sampled at random from broadcast. In adapting the work for public performance I've taken a number of early 20th century performances of the song and blended them together so that no one artist is used. In Show Boat, the lines are from a love duet. Placed next to the slowly evolving orchestral loop they sound mournful. In this context they have the quality of a spiritual, and seem to ask, 'how much longer?'
...
As Isaac Asimov said, "... whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."
...
As much as popular heaven is an eternally happy place, there is also confinement and a lack of emotional range. I needed to have smiles, but the kind of smiles that felt the strain of eternity. It took some time to find something that resonated, which turned out to be the celebrations at the end of World War 1. On 11 November 1918 the great powers declared an armistice, and in Paris people came out onto the streets to cheer 'the end of all wars'. They were happy but have the haggard look of people who had lived through suffering. By greatly slowing the speed of the film to match the music I force the gaze of the people on screen. They seem to stare at you for too long and their shouts and smiles seem strange. The process by which the film is slowed down is imperfect -- it works by finding find common elements in the frames and in such old and jumpy footage it often fails, causing unworldly distortions of the image. I finally decided to run the opening scene backwards, so that their bodies would seem to float unnaturally."
You know when something moves you so much that you're like shuddering and shaking and it's not even a personal emotion you're being overwhelmed by and rather just the sheer beauty of art.
Well.
weeeeeeeeeping.
weep weep weep weep.
The idea of seeing that visual and hearing that sound in a darkened room as the people who saw his live shows (in Australia and parts of Europe I don't inhabit) must have done is....
just...guh...
My brane can't take it.
It's a different mix of the song than the one I have too. The part where the guy sings "Wonder of the World" sample is much shorter and more slurred and distorted in my mp3 of the track.
Gonna write to Ellard over this. I have to. So long I have been almost exclusively listening to this guys music and then just as I am getting over my obsession with him he wants to release this beauty??
*dead*
What can I say to someone I feel so utterly grateful to without boring them though.
Thank you I guess.
??
I have been in love with "Wonder of All the World" by The Australian dance/electronica band Severed Heads for some time.
I love Severed Heads generally. But the first time I heard this song/piece of sound, it made me weep uncontrollably. It stirred me so intensely. Made me think of time and death and life. I didn't quite know why...
It's just a series of distorted violins and operatic singing after all.
Well I've just found the video that the Severed Heads guy Tom Ellard recently made for it, and it sums up precisely the sort of sorrow and joy combined thing I felt when I heard the audio so perfectly that I don't know what to do with myself watching it. I have such a thing for looking at old photos and video footage whilst listening to this song anyway. I'm totally spun out... overwhelmed....insane with the rush of...
Click to viewI knew Ellard was making a video for "Wonder of the World" because he said on his blog that he intended to play the song at live shows and he said he would put it up online when he was done playing the live dates, so I was waiting for it, but seems I slacked off because he put it up a while ago now and I only just checked now and yeah....yeah...
Seconds in I was weeping uncontrollably.
Now I cannot stop weeping.
All those jubilant faces of people who are dead now, slow, and the sound and then the swing with the child on it.
waaaaa I can't take it it's meddling with my soul.
Just FUUUUUUCK
As someone on youtube said of it.
"they are all ghosts now as we will be"
See also the beauty of Ellard's notes on the piece...
"The music is built on a single sample, a small moment of orchestral music captured from the radio, and played with one finger. The sound plays forwards and then reaching the end reverses, playing backwards to the start where it begins again. This alternating loop holds a melody but by constant repetition and reversal the individual notes are blurred into a drone -- a single complex sustained note. The loop fades in very slowly at the start of the piece and fades away again just as stealthily, implying that the music has no start or end and we are hearing only a section of an infinite sound.
...
The lines are from the 1927 musical Show Boat, music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. This was the first musical play with a serious intent, and is justly honoured for it. But until this year I actually had no idea where the voices originated, as they were sampled at random from broadcast. In adapting the work for public performance I've taken a number of early 20th century performances of the song and blended them together so that no one artist is used. In Show Boat, the lines are from a love duet. Placed next to the slowly evolving orchestral loop they sound mournful. In this context they have the quality of a spiritual, and seem to ask, 'how much longer?'
...
As Isaac Asimov said, "... whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."
...
As much as popular heaven is an eternally happy place, there is also confinement and a lack of emotional range. I needed to have smiles, but the kind of smiles that felt the strain of eternity. It took some time to find something that resonated, which turned out to be the celebrations at the end of World War 1. On 11 November 1918 the great powers declared an armistice, and in Paris people came out onto the streets to cheer 'the end of all wars'. They were happy but have the haggard look of people who had lived through suffering. By greatly slowing the speed of the film to match the music I force the gaze of the people on screen. They seem to stare at you for too long and their shouts and smiles seem strange. The process by which the film is slowed down is imperfect -- it works by finding find common elements in the frames and in such old and jumpy footage it often fails, causing unworldly distortions of the image. I finally decided to run the opening scene backwards, so that their bodies would seem to float unnaturally."
You know when something moves you so much that you're like shuddering and shaking and it's not even a personal emotion you're being overwhelmed by and rather just the sheer beauty of art.
Well.
weeeeeeeeeping.
weep weep weep weep.
The idea of seeing that visual and hearing that sound in a darkened room as the people who saw his live shows (in Australia and parts of Europe I don't inhabit) must have done is....
just...guh...
My brane can't take it.
It's a different mix of the song than the one I have too. The part where the guy sings "Wonder of the World" sample is much shorter and more slurred and distorted in my mp3 of the track.
Gonna write to Ellard over this. I have to. So long I have been almost exclusively listening to this guys music and then just as I am getting over my obsession with him he wants to release this beauty??
*dead*
What can I say to someone I feel so utterly grateful to without boring them though.
Thank you I guess.
??