filming, gig, and random photos

Tramp Ahead

Sadly no amusing disasters yet in filming and editing this short, mentioned in the last post. In fact it's going well. Saturday and Sunday were beautiful warm sunny days, the perfect conditions for filming. And as Santiago managed to get up and out really early and get hold of a reasonable tripod for fairly cheap he was able to start shooting around lunchtime. In fact across the weekend something like nine hours were spent trailing about the city and getting the bulk of the film done. A rough edit was also done on Sunday.

A couple more shots were snatched during the week on the way into work, and there only remain street scenes in the city, and any other shot that begs to be captured. There remains the soundtrack to sort out, although it's possible that with enough dampening a couple of whispered poems like an aural palimpsest could be recorde on the camera. This is very much under the influence of the Fall's Iceland from Hex Enduction Hour (lyrics here, scroll down), and what can be remembered of 22:00 (sorry, still no link). The poems are likely to be the text constructed through the film, and a new piece called queen mab - this influenced by the Fall, an essay on the Fall (in three parts, here, here, and here), by Shelley's Queen Mab (especially the notes), and a host of other little things. However the text of (Santiago's) queen mab won't be posted here just yet - possibly next week.

It's been given an extra imperative by Santiago actually having an interview for the MA course next week, and hoping to have a nearly complete edit on DVD to put in the portfolio. As usual, news of how it goes promised here but probably never fulfilled. Speaking of unfulfilled promises...

Corsano/Flower Duo

There is a good reason for the delay in giving an account of the gig - laziness - it's bloody hard to write about music without coming across as a tosser. But I'll give it a go...

The trouble is it keeps coming back to vague cliches, and drumming particularly is hard to describe. And when you haven't familiarised yourself with their music beforehand you don't know how far things are improvised. Hypnotic is a good place to start, Santiago kinda tripped out on the music. It wasn't as aggressive as say Skullflower! but you could see how Michael Flower's Shahi Baaja would meld fantastically with Matthew Bower's guitar. And it's that instrument, the shahi baaja that has to dominate this account. You'll notice there's no link provided for shahi baaja, that's because what comes up on a websearch is either a review (which doesn't have extensive information), or a sales/auction site (where the specific link might be temporary). But the following is from a seller's description on Bid or Buy South Africa:

"This great contemporary design shahi baaja combines the best of the Electric Bulbul Tarang, the Hawaiian Steel (Lap) Guitar and the Swarmandal (Indian harp). It belongs to the Tat Vadya family of plucked string instruments. The primary design of this instrument is inspired by the famous medieval Japanese Taishokoto. However this one has three instruments rolled into one and given an electric tweak. The keyboard dulcimer part of this instrument (remember this unit is several instruments rolled into one) is referred to as the bulbul tarang (literally translates to "waves of nightingales") or the Indian banjo but this has nothing to do with the Western bluegrass banjo - perhaps just a fuzzing of the words banjo with baajo (literally, "instrument")

The metal strings are plucked or strummed with picks while depressing the keys to change the notes. This instrument comes with 8 main strings, 2 sympathetic resonating strings and a 12-string electric drone harp. There are two types of strings in the main instrument; there are the drone strings and the melody strings. The melody strings run directly under the key-plate and are fretted by the keys. The drone strings run beside the key plate and are not fretted."

The sound on the night was great in the upper registers, and ranged from guitar-like through sitar-like to noises more like a flute or other wind instrument. It's also a pretty rich and layered sound, and might not be much use if you wanted something sparse. But it was fantastic here. Both musicians played with subtlety, the music ebbing and flowing from full assault mode to barely there and back again. You were kind of torn between letting the music mesmerise you and watching how Flower and Corsano played together, and how they played their instruments. The set felt a lot shorter than it actually was. And frankly I'm giving up there, go out and listen to them yourself - do your ears a favour for a change.