The Uncanny

[Murphy]

@version Listen to a lot of music like this in the great outdoors and for some reason it works. Can’t hold that as a negative but know what you mean. More mournful pieces don’t work, bit too out of the zone for walking.

The reason for citing Is There Anybody There? by A.Liles is that Mellotrony sound. Unease frequencies. Like a mini-moog, but there’s something so coherent in its focus, studio craft or maybe stumbled on fucking around, who knows, but playful too.

First heard played through a decent rig to a small crowd and it created a huge hush and collective stillness. Hair bristling. Add the producer’s ears to capture such a composition and tune in as such, minimal structure, succinct, just glad anyone created it. Stephen Stapleton nails this realm too. The NWW material with L&S working together can soar.

 

[Murphy]

i think there is something very uncanny about mysticism when its far removed from your mother tongue

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors had this quality at times initial viewing. It has such a big heart, but certain sequences tip over into the uncanny, not knowing the language pushes you further but the music is integrated sublimely.

 

[version]

I think Popol Vuh's Herzog soundtracks might have it, but I'm on the fence. There's definitely something slightly unsettling and otherworldly about them.

 

[version]

Some of the Wu-Tang instrumentals kind of have it.

 

[muser]

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors had this quality at times initial viewing. It has such a big heart, but certain sequences tip over into the uncanny, not knowing the language pushes you further but the music is integrated sublimely.

Yes but not just language I mean, the sonics and stylistic choices, when they're far removed from the cultural pallet you are used to but still trying to express similar feelings, then you feel that shift in perception.

 

[version]

The strings at 2:08 kind of do that. They're dislocated. They sound like a very old Saturday afternoon film in black and white breaking into the track for a few seconds.

 

[muser]

that feeling of being pulled in different directions

 

[Murphy]

Yes but not just language I mean, the sonics and stylistic choices, when they're far removed from the cultural pallet you are used to but still trying to express similar feelings, then you feel that shift in perception.

Fully to the max, different scales of harmonics but equally the untranslatable quality or qualia of cultural experience and exchange, the unknown human discovered and rediscovered if you hunt for that shift. It’s a very addictive experience because it can happen at any time.



For Popol Vuh a favourite at the beginning here, then into the depths with Das Rheingold.

 

[Murphy]

This Georgian (I think) Ensemble‘s piece juices it. Herzog places it within such a weird context too, although during an actual pandemic it might seem more like satire

 

[Murphy]

 

[muser]

how the voices slowly morph from grounded comfort into disconcerting and threatening abstract .