Day: December 7, 2007

Argento's Phenomena (Amazon Review)

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Dug this out of the amazon reader reviews because I always liked it; I think "a customer" was changed from something funnier:

monkeys, maniacs, mutants, and creepy crawlies by the ton, March 8, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Phenomena (1984) (Ws Rmst) (VHS Tape)
What more could you want from a horror movie? A pretty schoolgirl who commands armies of insects, a knife wielding serial killer, a deformed boy kept chained to a wall in the attic, a vengeful helper monkey with a razor blade, Donald Pleasance, delirious camerawork, blindingly gorgeous cinematography, pulsating music, characters who behave strangely for no particular reason, lots of pockets of glowing blue light (see where X-Files got some of their aesthetic ideas), surreally graphic violence, beautiful scenery, it's all right here. Sure, it's not Dario Argento's best work, but it's his most eccentric. Besides, why not watch a real horror film instead of Scream?

I've been using "characters who behave strangely for no reason" to describe Argento's films since I first read this.

"Phlogiston Phloat"

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"Phlogiston Phloat" [mp3 removed]

Have been fooling around with Reaktor effects plug-ins and softsynths. (Reaktor is like Max/MSP in that you can design your own synths but I've done very little of that--the pre-built ones alone are like working complex puzzles, at least if you want to understand how they function and make songs that are intuitively "yours.") In this song the drums have been treated with the Cyan and Fusion Reflections plugs, which fattened up a standard 808 loop in different ways. Through computer speakers you can't hear the bass at all but at normal volume with a decent home stereo the drums dominate. The pretty chord pad is a preset from the Akkord synth. The lead synth riffs are non-Reaktor softsynths so this isn't a total product endorsement. Am talking about mostly "formal" issues here because it's harder to nail the content, even if I wanted to--it's mostly about conflicting moods. Phlogiston was the element that everybody thought caused fires before the discovery of oxygen and its combustible properties. At the rate we're going these creationist f*cks will have us all believing in it again.