https://open.spotify.com/album/3O2uNeMyBaKfsV8yfgQ1xI?si=ski_c03bQ1CAmbhKP1IHiA

Perhaps not the best movie by Andrei, but the specific scene has haunted me ever since I saw it, all these years ago. Creating an alternative soundtrack for it emerged almost involuntarily. I wasn't planning on it but I think it fits very snuggly.

Hopefully members of this subreddit will appreciate it. If anything, the scene itself remains very powerful.

https://youtu.be/NoG_4l3dem4?si=Xg6S4CUNivy3MM2E

"Society of the Spectacle" is an experimental and (hopefully) thought-provoking eurorack modular track that tries to weave together the ideas of Guy Debord with the experimental soundscapes of the Lyra-8, which is manipulated and transformed by a modular system called the "Mutation Machine."

The track contains subtle backgrounds of sampled excerpts from Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle". These samples are processed and transformed within the modular system to create textures, echoing the dissonance and fragmentation between reality and the spectacle.

The heart of the composition is the Lyra-8 analog synthesizer, which in this patch produces rich, organic flavors of noise, starting with distinct clicks that degenerate into more noisy textures. It's then fed to the Mutation Machine, where it undergoes a metamorphosis.

The result is a hypnotic blend of evolving drones, unpredictable textures and (sometimes) melodies, which I think emit a certain atmosphere, haunted by specters of the past, twisting and curling as they are stretched through space and time.

Please enjoy.

Listen here: Society of the Spectacle

It's a voice. Who's there?

It's music is what's there. What's, not who's - music isn't a matter of "who", it never is and never was, it's a matter of "what" and it always will be. So listen carefully: the music is talking to you (how does a "what" talk? Surely only a "who" can talk? You push the thought out of your mind, or the thought is pushed out of your mind by these words that enter your ear when the music says

I'm listening to your voice.

And something in you shudders, and it says

You're going to die

and it says

You're already dead - the world is dead - everything is dead

and you look around your room, you look at your hands, you look out the window at cars passing by, you imagine the music is mistaken - music is lying to you - music is deceptive, tricky, conniving, the master manipulator. So you tell the music as much: you turn down the volume. The music is whispering now and it says

You can't ignore me forever.

and the music is over for now. Later you're eating some ice cream, sitting at the computer, watching a video on some website (it's youtube): it's someone talking and laughing and you laugh too. This isn't music so the volume is higher, the laughter, the laughter from you and the laughter from the distant other. It comingles and lingers in the room - You aren't listening to it, it says

I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm dying.

it says

Please, for the love of god, help me, help me

it says

Why aren't you listening to me? Please, please, please

and you close your web browser and you brush your teeth and go to bed.

You sleep and you dream about a dense forest, is it a tropical forest? who can say - it's thicket and the hum of insects and damp hunks of old fallen log, mushrooms, the soil is soft, the air is thick. You come across a pair of shoes, up in a tree, dangling by their laces as if on telephone wire, and you realize you aren't wearing any shoes, those are your shoes - how did they get up there? Ants are swarming on your feet and you struggle to shake them off, little red ants, fire ants, they're biting and stinging. You need to get those shoes!

A fog rolls in just as you begin to climb the tree. The bark is slick like mud but also rough on your fingers, they're filthy and bleeding, there's a knot in the tree where you stuck your foot and it's stuck. You can't tell how far up you are - you look down and it's just a cloud of grey, you look up and it's the same - all there is is you and your foot, your hands, the pain from the ants (columns of which climb effortlessly past you going up or down), the promise of your shoes somewhere up above, but the music intervenes and it says

tweet tweet tweet

and you open your eyes and it's the sun out the window. Your bedsheets are damp with sweat. You look outside and for once the music is looking you right in the eye, perched on the neighbor's rusty arial, and once more it says

tweet tweet tweet

and flies off. somewhere far away, there's a million pairs of shoes all in boxes.