In recent years I’ve become fond of Folk-rock music, though when I say that I specifically mean the format of a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar. Names like Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen. Maybe part of the attraction is the aesthetic, the travelling troubadour, the bard who entertains with songs and stories. Narrative is an important part of the genre, something I’ve always found appealing in music. I also like the minimalism of just a single instrument and voice.
I spent some time reading about Woody Guthrie and protest songs.
I read about the russian punk rock group Pussy Riot and their guerilla performances. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/15/pussy-riot-nadezhda-tolokonnikova-slavoj-zizek#comments
Hollie Buhagiar is a multi award-winning Gibraltarian composer based in London, who specialises in crafting bespoke scores for film, TV and Games. She has worked on a plethora of projects for shorts, feature length films and series alongside Grammy and Academy Award winning engineers in the finest studios across London. Graduating from Leeds College of Music with first-class honours in Music production, Hollie continued on to complete a Masters at theNational Film and Television School.
Throughout her career she has been hailed for her unique and varied sonic palette as well as her ability to create fascinating scores that approach traditional composition from a new and exciting perspective. Hollie’s experience spans worldwide and includes work for the likes of Amazon,Sky, Channel 4, BFI, NOWNESS, Creative England, Tate, The Guardian, Film London, VICE and BBC. Her projects have received critical acclaim winning various prestigious awards, these include a Porsche Award, a Gold British Arrow and the McLaren Award for Best British Animation, as well as being a two time Unity Awards nominee. She was also honoured with Gibraltar’s first ever Extraordinary Achievement Award for her work in the arts.
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I asked Hollie how much artistic freedom she was given when working for Tv/Film and games. Her answer was that it depended on the specific project and varied from job to job. Some jobs are more collaborative with sound designers and directors, while other times she might have more creative control herself.
This is helpful as I am somewhat interested in sound for tv/film and game and so it’s good to get a better understanding on how it works.
I prefer to listen to narratives than read them. I try to listen to audiobooks a couple times a week.
Generally, I dislike dramatised audiobooks with sound effects and music. I feel like they take me out of the story more than they do add to it. I find that the narrator reading the story is sufficient enough for me to imagine the scene.
For example, if the narrator says:
“She slammed the door with all her might, the sound ricocheting around the room like a panicking trapped crow.”
I don’t really feel it’s necessary for the sound of a slamming door to be added.
I suppose it would be interesting if you heard the same sentence, but instead of the obvious sound of the door, you heard the sound of the simile, a screeching, flapping crow.
Perhaps it comes down to the intention of the original media.
Would authors of past times still be writing books with the option of films?
I listened to Steven King’s The Stand last year as an audiobook and thought about how he writes in a way that is very suited to film and tv so it’s not surprising that so many of his books have been adapted.
Being given the prompt of dreams, I thought of a few things to base this project on:
Brainstorming
Dystopia
Utopia
Folk-Horror
Surrealism (automatic writing)
Mysticism
I decided to go with something in the aesthetics of Folk-Horror as I am a fan of works in the genre and It is something I haven’t explored much before.
We breifly talked about Expressionism vs Impressionism
I spent some time researching the history of radio broadcasting.
The history of radio in the UK has had a definite effect on media, and what we see as British culture.
I looked into the following:
The BBC’s status as a national broadcaster. John Reith. Difference between the UK and US ‘Golden Age of Radio’ adverts and entertainment such as “Lights Out” and “The Witches Tale”
The term “Reithianism” describes certain principles of broadcasting associated with Lord Reith. These include an equal consideration of all viewpoints, probity, universality and a commitment to public service. Audiences had little choice apart from the upscale programming of the BBC, a government agency which had a monopoly on broadcasting. Reith, an intensely moralistic executive, was in full charge. His goal was to broadcast, “All that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement…. The preservation of a high moral tone is obviously of paramount importance.”[22] Reith succeeded in building a high wall against an American-style free-for-all in radio in which the goal was to attract the largest audiences and thereby secure the greatest advertising revenue. There was no paid advertising on the BBC; all the revenue came from a tax on receiving sets. Highbrow audiences, however, greatly enjoyed it.[23] At a time when American, Australian and Canadian stations were drawing huge audiences cheering for their local teams with the broadcast of baseball, rugby and hockey, the BBC emphasised service for a national, rather than a regional audience. Boat races were well covered along with tennis and horse racing, but BBC was reluctant to spend its severely limited air time on long football or cricket games, regardless of their popularity.[24]
I remember Steve Reichs ‘Come Out’ being used as a sinister accompaniment to a scene in the tv show Devs where the only sound was the piece. Repetition can be frightening.
Hauntology. Broadcast & The Focus Group.
Silence is like being submerged in darkness. Builds tension and leaves the imagination. Underneath is a scene from Under the Skin.
Not much of observation on sound, but, I find horror games are scarier than films due to interaction. When paired with visually disturbing thing images or scenes I think that silence is the most effective way to make the situation more frightening. In the audiobook of Steven Kings The Stand that I listened to last year, there is a chapter where the character Larry Underwood has to walk through the pitch-black 1.5 mile long Lincoln Tunnel that is littered with corpses. I remember this as being very tense and somewhat frightening, however this fear was not through sound but the narrative.
For the upcoming project, we were told to create a piece of work on the theme of dreams. I decided to do mine on a dream that I remember from last year.
The content of this dream – or rather, nightmare – can be read in the following script which I will be reading as the central part of the work.
The misty pond was surrounded by a thick wilderness of bulrush. On the far side of the pond, a grand old willow stretched out above the lake like an old man's hand, its leaves combing through the surface of the water. The water was coated in a thick scum of tundra coloured algae that moved as some amorphous being, littered with natural debris. I thought I saw a figure underneath the shading tree, washing some cloth or fabric, but as the breeze blew the branches, the apparition was no more.
I turned and stood facing the derelict old building. One of the two towering wooden doors was ajar, and I went in, submerging myself in darkness, as the grand door shut behind me in silence.
This damp room was small, with contorted walls that leaned and bowed like ancient trees.
They were spotted with black mould. The peeling scab of wallpaper looked like a discarded newspaper in the puddle of a gutter. Its once luxurious azure gleam only now made the walls viler and colder in this dark dank tomb.
These walls, rising to oblivion, had no end. The ceiling - if such a term is applicable - was an endless inverted well, a great void of black.
I was then aware of the sound of footsteps.
In front of me, another door, much less grand, began to move as the handle turned.
The door slowly opened to a figure with a candlestick in hand. A pale veiled woman in a white nightgown.
She stood with her wet black hair dripping, sending trails of inky black down her cold robed body.
In her right hand, a blood-stained rag dripped, rhythmically, forming a puddle at her peculiar feet.
Her blue lips unmoving, the wind whistled through the cracks of the walls.
“I am your guide.”
I asked:
“Where are we going?”
SILENCE
“Where are we going?”
SILENCE
“Where are we going?”
SILENCE
“To the bottom of the lake”
The candle flame began to flicker. The walls creaked and cracked. The once whispered wind wailed wild.
The lady snapped back her head, teary red eyes wide and shrieked a banshee's cry.
END
This dream was likely subconsciously inspired by my reading of ghost stories by M.R James, and a specific scene from Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).
I have read some of “The Weird and the Eerie” by Mark Fisher, and hope to eventually elaborate on this, as well as on the Hauntology of “Ghosts Of My Life”.
Mirror (1975)
Elements of the dream, such as the lady talking through the wind, the bloody cloth and ‘peculiar feet’ have been dramatised and expanded upon after reading about the mythology of the Banshee, Caoineag, Bean-nighe, Cyhyraeth and the Midnight Washerwomen.
While researching Banshees, I came across the traditional Irish and Scottish practice of keening, a form of vocal lament for the dead.
This led me to spend time researching Alan Lomax, an ethnomusicologist, musician and folklorist.
The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.
Alan Lomax
Folklore can show us that this dream is age-old and common to all mankind. It asks that we recognize the cultural rights of weaker peoples in sharing this dream. And it can make their adjustment to a world society an easier and more creative process. The stuff of folklore—the orally transmitted wisdom, art and music of the people can provide ten thousand bridges across which men of all nations may stride to say, “You are my brother.”
Alan Lomax
Lomax talks about local cultures as something that should be maintained through the diversity of culture, in opposition to the oppression of cultural hedgemony that occurs through nationalism and the concept of universal popular culture. He calls this cultural equity.
I also found the British Library Sound Archives (available on https://sounds.bl.uk/) to be a great resource for a number of archived conversations on local ghost stories across the UK.
Natural Snow Buildings (formed 1998) are a duo that creates unique music blended between post-rock, free/psychedelic/ritual folk, drone and ambient.
Their album Daughter of Darkness clocks in at 7 hours 20 of material with single tracks ranging from 5 minutes to 45. The structure of each ‘song’ is generally centred around a droning guitar/dulcimer-esque theme ( with a heavy bed of echo/delay, distortion) that repeats, sometimes subtly changes over time. Many songs become more ritualistic with chanting, shakers and drums. Their albums are often quite overdriven and lo-fi, contributing to the improvised folk aesthetic.
Grouper
Grouper is the solo project of artist, musician, singer-songwriter and producer Liz Harris who makes reverb-heavy psychedelic folk. Acoustic in nature, the majority of her music is drowned in reverb to the point that the vocals become part of the instrumental.
Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
The double album – A I A : Dream Loss and Alien Observer – saw more of an ambient focus and is a personal favourite of mine.
In context
In my radio piece, I will be using convolution reverbs, to give the soundscape a sense of place. I’ll use a long decay to make the room seem larger due to the impossibly tall ceiling and to accentuate the wet (dripping water) sounds.
At the current moment, I’m not sure how to implement music in my piece. The music in the dramatisations of M.R. James in the BBC Radio Collection that inspired my dream often came across as quite cliched, with the sounds of waterphones and strings.
I will likely use synthesis to create drones inspired by the film, The Innocents, what I watched last year and have previously written about.
