Murmur

Murmur

I composed this piece about 2 months ago for the modern dance company Anima Dance.

I had worked with the aristic director / choreographer, Rachel Brooker, on another piece entitled Askance (which I can post if people like this track) that was showcased this past summer in the American Dance Festival.

Both of these pieces were based on the writings of Haruki Murakami. More specifically, his works entitled Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Rachel wanted to express her interpretation of Murakami's work as well as the emotions of fear and solitude.

This was my contribution.

Vocals - Michelle Magdalen

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This is great... I'm a bit stoned and this really drew me in, very unsettling, but also strangely beautiful at times. Crystalline, if that doesn't sound too wanky and pretentious... the vocal is very well used, just unintelligable enough for your brain to make guesses at what it is, and good use of delay on it to confuse me even more! Top track

Cheers Iain C! Thanks for listening. I'm glad you liked it.

Oh, and there is nothing wrong with a little wankery and pretention every now and again ;) Nice choice of words. Hehe

Peace

digin thiz dark feelin, interesting cliping soundz, don´t know how to make them personaly so i give u credit 4 dat!!! am i out of my mind??!?! am i!?! there´s thiz voice in my ehad since i put da track in, i erally dig thiz kinda beat datz coming, soundz liek short circuit or such, erall digin thiz, have 2 listen when stoned at night

im not liking that percussive shaky thing too much as it seems to distract me from the tracks depth. however, overall its quite good, the vocals remind me of the movie 'spider' in that you cant quite understand it but the presence tells its own story without fully understanding it. the reverse on the vocals is well placed. I think if you slowly faded the vocals out midway and then brought them back at around the 7:00 mark it might help the track seem more diverse. the pads are of course lovely.

Yarr I quite like this... haunting but pretty at the same time, nice and ambient... all the chattering murmuring noises/voices makes me think of insects... OOOH you know what it reminds me of? On Nausicaa in the beginning when she's in the insect forest and stuff.

Anyway, yeah nice atmosphere, nice tunes... but perhaps the sounds could have developed a little more... got a little bit sick of them after 9 minutes... doesn't have to be a big change, just enough to notice. And if they do subtly change and I'm just to stupid to notice, I apologise :P

Cheers guys for listening.

I always forget to post a 'use your imagination to envision bodies moving to this song' comment when I initially share these dance related pieces. It's a fine balance when working with the choreographer to want to make all these dynamic changes to the music when the movement doesn't call for it.

So, to that end, sorry if it comes off boring, or not dynamically shifting enough to some of you. I aplogize in advance and hope you can appreciate it as a musical sculpture used in conjunction with modern dance.

Thanks again everyone for listening. Peace.

this is GREAT dude. 2:36 right now and its seeming plenty dynamic, that sort of bass synth rhythm bit just came in, I can only hope the dancers did something really great for that transition. this is some great soundtrack work, feels like it leaves a space in it for the dance portion, although i have no idea how to explain that in any way that relates to something that can be done. but yeah. you're definently doing well for yourself if you have six or so fit women performing to your music with your bodies, so any criticism I could give wouldnt really matter in the long run. cant think of any anyways.

Hey don't apologise... art is art... it's never really right or wrong, and to be honest, that was just me being really fussy... I try to point out at least one thing for someone to work on in the hopes that I can help them improve... it's really very good the way it is right now.

Cheers taphead for the listen!

springymajig, I dig. Thanks for the shout.

Peace

This sounded exactly the sort of thing I'd have to download. So I did.

Jesus man that's some dark stuff. You mixed the vocal section in perfectly, it's so amazingly produced i.e eq'd/reverb'd/compress'd. It's like a really dark dream where you can't help but look at something really horrible but symultaneously you want to take your eyes away from it. It prefered the vocals dry to the later delayed version of them, but they still work.

The melodic pads are nice and brooding without being to obtrusive to the mix. The semi-percussive sounding 'bassline' that runs through the first half is good but I can't help but think that it'd be nice for it to evolve somehow through the piece (not entirely sure how though, possibly a slow shift from dry to heavily reverbed, kicking it slowly into the back of the mix).

But nice stuff man. Cheers for making it. And super top marks for capturing such an incredible vocal section.

i'd agree with the pete's dry/delay comment above. but those are some haunting vocals alright. i can't help but be a bit distracted by the clickiness of the bass- it works in places but sometimes pops a bit too heavily. if you know what i mean.

from the few tracks i've heard from you, you certainly are pretty hot at creating an atmosphere. i just realised i got problematika, lotek beats and spidergram on my 'puter to listen to.. awesumz.

did i mention this track is wikkid by the way. very edgey. i'm loving that shuffling noise sound, it's so simple but adds so much to the track.

having said that, when i imagine dancers pratting around to this i laugh. but that's not about the music, it's about dancers.

Woa, thanks mcbpete and josefmcb for listening!

That 'great vocal section' was none other than my love, Michelle. Did several takes of her reading some Murakami and then some of her own material (she is a poet). Spent a great deal of time editing and mixing the vocal parts. There are, as you can tell, many layers in there.

I am glad that the haunting vibe came through. One of the images I was told to work from was that of someone walking through a forest in the dead of night and hearing voices like this. Just out of reach or touch, and you can make out just some of the words...

Oh, and the 'shuffling' sound you hear...is actually vocal layers too! :grin: I mixed and eq'd them and then put them through a distortion plug and dialed in just the right amount of 'shuffle'. Glad you liked them.

Thanks again everyone for listening!

Peace

Wo this is quite atmospheric. Almost sickly in style. Real bleak and stuff. I like it. Yeah the 'Murmurs' give it an almost Aphex feel. May add some more comments on subsequent listens.

it builds but i think it's kinda wanky