Soundtrack Music for Comics?

  • Well not really. But maybe to extend the comic experience in other contexts, like driving in rush-hour traffic? To make this work well, the comic would need activate the soundtrack quickly.
  • Another purpose of the soundtrack work is to discover a new territory of associations.
  • Music was an important part of Man-machine's beginnings. The comic was conceived of in Evanston, Illinois, in a two-flat apartment building, known as the Zoom house. The first Man-machine drawings occured while listening to Front 242 remixes of fairly brutal, simplistic music. In my head, Front 242's early exploration of tribal rhythms and automatic bass lines combined with the politics of the times: Desert Storm was on the news constantly. I was reading translations of Homer and Virgil and seeing the reflection of our world in antiquity. The recognition had an uncanny quality.
  • Fast forward a half decade. In the mid 90s I was struck by the work of the electronic group RAC. When I first heard them in small record store in Montreal I simply did not know what to think. It wasn't mood music, because it was too jagged to be mesmerizing. But it seemed portentious and had incredible album art.
  • Flashforward to 2010, and it seems that some of the themes played around with by Front 242 and RAC remain relevant aesthetically.
  • The Man-machine aesthetic seems slightly different. A bit grittier, prone to wierdness and mind-out-of-control.
  • For the soundtrack to Praepositio:
  • Mystified has provided a very persuasive form of soundtrack music in the form of vast, evolving, breathing soundscapes. These has matched some of the spiritual themes quite closely.
  • Plexus Instruments has been mostly focused on creating a set of tone poems evoking the desert in the future: a place of long light and bleak hope.
  • Voyager One's Tokyoidaho does not stream online, but really fits and enhances the mood of much of the first book. I am glad to see that the new version of the band takes its name from the wonderfully mystical song.
  • National Wrecking Company, Frank Hillis, has provided leftfield sample manipulations from a fellow Chicagoan.
  • Deer has provided a rambling digital dub that once awoke me from a nap like a ghost.
  • Mircronaut provided a moody tone poem.
  • Utofbu provided a remarkable, fractured vision of an ancient code.
  • Soundhacker contributed a really interesting kind of beat/movement.
  • The soundtrack for Book 2 has mostly been compiled, and shifts focus to the texture of a future Mexico City that is both the inlet and outlet for the vast garage/technology machinery of the Cartel. Very nice tracks by mystified, Move D, Ed Matus, Micronaut and others.
  • The soundtrack for Book 3 is still being assembled. So far with tracks by mystified, Toner Low, and others.

Comments

Senex said…
The music adds to the experience filmicly in a way that is impossible with a traditional comic book. All the interface occuring at once on personal technology rides the spine differently than simply reading a trade in your bedroom with Lustmord playing.

I wonder if an installation at a gallery or similar venue at some point might be appropo for promotion of the comic. Perhaps something that offers a downloadable app that let's the audience participate on their tech in some way.

If the comic could somehow be dragged along two (or more) large, adjacent walls by the viewer... with the attendant musical changes cued as they are with the online comic... the effect could be quite mesmerizing. A singular sci-fi expression.
manmachine said…
Very interesting idea. Maybe gesture controller. Or a way to leave commentary on a projected screen. Your idea of two walls suggests 2 projectors. That would work easily with a two monitor setup off of a standard video card.

Maybe people could bring thumbdrives, or link to music on the web??? that would be funny but only if people actually participated.

Ah well, back to drawing. The miserable art!