Seeing Sound at Sonic Celluloid

Ever notice how people tend to close their eyes at concerts? Obviously, some of these poor folks are sleeping, but the majority are taking mental trips that would make iTunes Visualizer pale in comparison. Sonic Celluloid, which screened on May 19th at Block Cinema in association with WNUR 89.3 FM, merged the cerebral voyages of experimental and silent filmmakers with the audial musings of bands Bird Show, KK Rampage, Weasel Walter, and The Lonesome Organist. Needless to say, no one at Block had their eyes closed that night.

Bird Show, headed up by Chicago-based musician Ben Vida, lent its melange of western and eastern acoustic music to the films of Ernie Gehr (Wait, Morning, and Untitled) and to John Whitney Jr.’s Terminal Self. The eerie, atmospheric strains of Bird Show’s minimalist tracks created a mood for each of Gehr’s films. Wait, a film featuring a man and woman at a kitchen table, took on a foreboding quality with the addition of Bird Show’s rhythms. Morning, a long shot of a window, took on a similarly tense mood, as did Untitled, which was merely a shot of falling snow. Whitney’s Terminal Self, an eight minute reel which depicts the weaving and unweaving of a shouting woman, was also heightened by Bird Show’s sonic creations. The image, haunting as it was, took on an even more sinister quality with Vida’s electronic elucidations.

“Who is KK Rampage? They’re the band that crashes your favorite bands’ show, throws powdered sugar everywhere, pukes on it and then rolls around in the disgusting puke paste. They’re the band that knows what high school girls were made for. They are the holocaust.” So says Tony Herrington of Wire about Sonic Celluloid’s second band, KK Rampage. Although Rampage abstained from spraying us with baking materials and other substances, they did lend their unique vocal skills to Harry Smith’s Early Abstractions, and to various clips from Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 film Point Break. Unlike Bird Show, who created moody tracks for Gehr’s films, KK Rampage paid an homage to the MTV generation. They turned Smith’s collage/montage of dark and fascinating images into a sort of music video, punctuating the succession of cinematic glyphs with sharp, earsplitting screams. KK Rampage took a similar approach to Point Break, providing a new soundtrack to the action-packed tale of cops and surfers. And might I add: Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze + Subtitles + Manic screaming = Sheer hilarity.

Synethesia: a neurological condition which causes one to hear, smell, or taste color. Judging from the way in which Weasel Walter jammed to the whirling tonal worlds of Stan Brakhage and Harry Smith, I would say that the Chicago composer and instrumentalist has a pretty good case of Synthesia. Weasel Walter added another dimension of color and perception to Brakhage’s Glaze of Cathexis and The Process, along with Smith’s Early Abstractions. With his jazz-inspired musical contortions, Walter gave life to Glaze of Cathexis’ whirling colors, The Process’ hazy and unfocused worldview, and Early Abstraction’s cut and paste progression of images and shapes.

Chicago musician Jeremy Jacobsen, AKA The Lonesome Organist, used music in the most traditional fashion of all the bands at Sonic Celluloid. “Traditional,” however, is not synonymous with “boring.” In fact, he was my favorite act of the night. Adding his macabre timbred pipings to Wladyslaw Starewicz’s The Cameraman’s Revenge, and George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon, Jacobsen took us back to the realm of early twentieth century cinema. He added suspense and humor to Starewicz’s stop action animation tale of philandering beetles, and supplemented Méliès’ cinematic sublimity with his own brand of scored magic. To hear The Lonesome Organist’s silver-screen accompaniments is to take a trip into film history.

Whether you want to visit Ernie Gehr’s dark world with the aid of Bird Show, rip apart reality with KK Rampage and Harry Smith, trip the light fantastic with Weasel Walter and Brakhage, or take a trip to the moon with Méliès and The Lonesome Organist, Block Cinema’s has got you covered. The next time I go to the symphony and close my eyes with the rest of the non-drowsy crowd, I’ll have a whole new collection of images to run through my mind, courtesy of Sonic Celluloid.
-- Brenna Ehrlich