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Videos for Future Times: Matmos, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Mark Fell

"A Winged Victory for the Sullen":http://www.awvfts.com/ is American composer Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, who normally forms one half of Stars of the Lid. The song, off of the duo's recent self-titled disc on Erased Tapes, is startlingly brief...

A Winged Victory for the Sullen is American composer Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, who normally forms one half of Stars of the Lid. The song, off of the duo’s recent self-titled disc on Erased Tapes, is startlingly brief. Soft, enveloping swells of synth begin the song, but soon enough give up a single viola line that skims along the top of the electronic foam like a shore-bird. You’ll find the video a strange and beautiful near-literal translation of the music, which is kinda weird given said song is classic airport-ambiance, a variety of music usually more interested in shading than narrating.

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Well, then. I know we’ve all had enough of triangles in this here land of cool kid internet music, but this gets a pass several times over. For one, the concept of the new Matmos record, the Ganzfeld EP (out yesterday), is telepathy. “Subjects” were placed into sensory deprivation while Matmosian Drew Daniel attempted to transmit “the concept of the album” into their brain. What came back out, whatever the subject experienced in that time, was used as rough material for the music. So, our green triangles were conjured through that process of highly experimental crowdsourcing, in this case via a one Ed Schrader. Two, the song is incredible: orchestral mutated Baltimore club music with a bit of that classic San Francisco deep-thinking IDM clinging to the track’s DNA.

A high-power optical microscope, nanoscientist Jonathan Howse, and artist/musician Mark Fell yielded the sonification below. We’ll have more on Fell in the very near future, so let’s leave it at that for now.

Scale-Structure-Synthesis By Jonathan Howse and Mark Fell from Electronic Supper Club on Vimeo.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.