| Process: And how better to take on this topic than to adopt the style that’s criticized for causing “short-attention span theater”, i.e. MTV and Michael Mann-style quick cutting? Each song is exactly 90 seconds, and with this strict guideline we got out our razor and began chopping samples, ideal in bringing across our concepts in a short-time. To paraphrase a cliché, if a picture’s worth 1,000 words, then how much are 10 recognizable recontextualized samples worth? Indeed, being pressed for time, each sample had to be deliberate and charged with its own set of meanings, or “iconography” (hmm, iconograffiti?). In other words, our samples were not Top-40 hooks stolen for their proven marketability, but rather as cultural landmarks a music fan is likely to pick up on. The samples from these eight Instant Classics can be categorized as: thematically-related, musically aesthetic, seemingly random, and self-sampling (original recorded material creating cohesion to what would’ve been disparate elements). Notable examples of this are vocals summarizing literary works, MIDI, pre-written performances, and last (and certainly least), improv-ing (or “wanking”, to use the parlance of our times). These notions also hold true visually: In a given instant, you may see pure CG (computer graphics) elements and characters, hand-built models, scanned images, live-action blue-screen shots, and stop-animation composited over several movie scenes. We feel this perfectly accompanies the dense, multi-layered music. |
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