List of Fictional Diseases

This List of Fictional Diseases on Wikipedia is very interesting and could probably form the basis for some interesting artistic projects.

(Via BoingBoing)

Harry Smith: Heaven and Earth Magic

The first 9 minutes from Harry Smith's 1962 film "Heaven and Earth Magic". I find this absolutely amazing. Read more about Harry Smith here.

Jerry Williams: Number One

Ever since I was a kid back in the 1980s, I've seen Swedish rock'n'roller Jerry Williams as something of a pathetic, chubby, middle-aged rocker trying to relive the 1950's in the most embarrasing way. And truthfully, I still feel that way about him to some degree.

But I have to admit that this video and song -- from 1963, way before I was born -- has got to be one of the most wonderful songs and videos ever to come out of Sweden. Both unintentionally silly and unintenionally nightmarish, it has a hypnotic, dream-like David Lynch quality to it that transcends the sum of its parts and becomes something absolutely sublime. I love it.

Weekend WTF: Maruosa

The WTF to end all WTFs. (Warning: make sure to turn down the volume a bit first)

Salad Fingers 9

It's out of the bag:

Weekend WTF

WTF?

Upcoming project...

Since David Firth has now publicly announced this on his Twitter, I guess I won't have to be secretive about it any more; I'm composing the soundtrack for the next episode of his popular and creepy "Salad Fingers" cartoon series, the first new episode in four years. This'll be my first collaboration with Mr. Firth since 2008's stop motion "Crooked Rot", which I wrote about earlier on this blog.

Not familiar with Salad Fingers? Familiarize yourself with this, a representative early episode from 2004.

Francoise Gamma

This is some wonderfully strange, mysterious and beautiful stuff. I love it.

UPDATE: More (colourful) work here!

Odboy & Erordog, episode 2

There's finally a good recording of the chamber quartet for my "Odboy & Erordog, episode 2" piece, and I'm proud to present the whole work for all to enjoy online. The possibility of a commission for episode 3 is around the corner, so cross your fingers and maybe we'll soon get to see what fate has in store for the poor boy and his dog.



(Thanks to The Peärls Before Swïne Experience, Studio Element and the Society of Swedish Composers for making the recording possible.)

Oooh, fishy fishy fishy fish

Meant to post this Monty Python Clip of the Week yesterday, to coincide with both friday and the fish theme of the day. The clip, taken from their 1983 film "The Meaning of Life", is -- hands down -- Monty Python at their weirdest and most surreal.

Slimy sexy mutant orgy

Saam Farahmand is a name to look out for. I first came across his work two years ago, in the excellent music video for Klaxons' "Magick", an Aleister-Crowley-inspired song with a simple yet very effective video that stayed with me for a long time.

Now he's at it again; his latest video for the same band is a stunning Cronenbergesque soft-porn flick that proves that the heritage of Chris Cunningham (and to some extent, Brian Yuzna) is still very much alive.

Klaxons - Twin Flames from Modular People on Vimeo.

How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels

Craig Welch, 1996.

Harry Clarke

Irish illustrator and stained glass artist Harry Clarke (1889-1931) has fascinated me ever since I first happened upon his work in a beautiful edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination". He's like an Aubrey Beardsley with ten times the craft, displaying almost inhuman skills for detail and composition.

You'll find lots of high-quality scans of his work HERE. Personally, I like his monochrome works the best. It's one thing to look at the image as a whole, but when you zoom in and start going over the details, you can get lost for hours and hours. Simply amazing.

1 million views: Crooked (Orcus) Rot

Huzzah! The YouTube presentation of Crooked (Orcus) Rot has just reached over 1,000,000 views. I'm pretty sure that's the biggest (accumulated) audience I've ever had. Crooked (Orcus) Rot is a stop motion film by David Firth, for which I composed the music and sound design. It is also, according to The Daily Telegraph, "the 2nd creepiest thing on the internet".



David Firth is a talented English young man who shot to internet stardom around 2005 at the age of 22 with entertaining yet disturbing flash cartoons such as Salad Fingers and Spoilsbury Toast Boy. His sensibilities often call to mind the work of David Lynch and Tim Burton, but still he manages to sustain a personal artistic voice very much his own.

Crooked (Orcus) Rot is an amazing little short, which actually made it quite difficult for me to score. The fact that I instantly fell in love with it really raised the bar for me; I really wanted to do it justice and find the kind of music and sound design that fit the images perfectly -- supporting them and never getting in the way. The fact that the film itself is very much a kind of 'visual music' prompted a need for a specific kind of score.

The soundtrack is quite abstract compared to "conventional" music. No discernible themes, melodies, etc. -- I opted for a feverish atonal and timbre-driven score, attempting to erase the borders between music and sound design -- and thus the score hopefully fuses quite naturally with the film itself. My ambition was for the soundtrack to be a natural, organic continuation of the film, instead of just being a musical accompaniment running parallel to the it.

As for the overall sound design of the film, Firth provided the voices and foley effects (the physical sounds such as wheels spinning, a cigarette being lit, typing on the computer keyboard etc.) while I provided the more abstract sound design (intro sequence weirdness, the wobbling halo, sparks of electricity etc).

The great animator Peter Chung once said that "...animation is the creation of the illusion of spontaneity (...) because nothing is in fact less spontaneous than the process of animating." I think this is also very appropriate for the kind of soundtrack I created for this film; the aim was to produce a natural flow that feels effortless, when in fact it was long, hard, frustrating work to arrive at a result that felt "right". In the end I was pleased with my efforts, and to my great satisfaction Firth was very enthusiastic about the finished score. I hope you enjoy it too, and I urge you to check out Firth's site for more amazing and disturbing cartoons.

A tv Dante

In addition to my last post:
There's also a Dante tv-series by Tom Phillips and Peter Greeneway containing the first 8 Chants of the Inferno.



See the whole series at ubuweb.

Superman Sees

This is why I like comic books.