Here’s a
beautiful dreampop track titled “Streets of Fire” from Symmetry/Themes For An
Imaginary Film, a 37-track, nearly two hour piece recorded by Johnny Jewel,
of Chromatics and Glass Candy, from April 2008 through May 2011.
The entirety
of Symmetry can be heard on Soundcloud here:
Three years
in the making, Symmetry - the project that began as a conceptual tangent
between Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, & Desire's more abstract sides -
finally sees its release this month. Themes For An Imaginary Film is two hours
of claustrophobic cinematic bliss compiled for Painters, Writers,
Photographers, Designers, Cruisers, Night Walkers, & Dreamers. Adrenaline
drips thick like syrup across a horizon where memories become blurred scenes
behind the windshield & yesterday's faces fade as the road strobes to
aggressive rhythms. Romantic melodies linger in the rearview mirror as chimera
bells saturate the electric fog that's slowly rolling in.
Over the span
of thirty seven tracks, Symmetry embraces the elegance of European noir cut
with a lean & violent American razor. Directly in your face & breathing
down your neck one minute, & escaping beyond the night sky the next. The
attention given to color & detail on these recordings is more graphic than
musical. More visual than aural. With no flashy virtuosity to clutter the mood,
the album's pulse thrives on the empty pockets of space left in the wake of
throbbing bass & the faint flicker of electro candlelight. Minimal, strict,
& always in motion, there's an oppressive overtone throughout the record
that winds itself tight as a clock. Johnny Jewel & Nat Walker (Chromatics
& Desire) give us propulsive moments that are more rhythm based than Pop,
& less reliant on a lyrical presence than their other projects.
A lot of
computer screens have flashed rumors of Jewel's synthesized score for Nicolas
Refn's Drive this year. Symmetry isn't his score for Drive. These tracks date
back to 2008 when Jewel was working on Farah's Into Eternity album. Some of the
other tracks are the first things Jewel & Walker worked on in Montreal
before Desire was up & running, & while Chromatics as in hiding after
the success of Night Drive. As Jewel says: "We were just spending all
night in a trance with not enough sleep, exploring space, rhythm & tone."
With
repetitions in theme like hi hats dressed as stopwatches, and bass lines
mimicking the pumping of blood, the statement of Symmetry is in the
understatement. Dueling themes permeate & mirror the entire album. Feminine
/ Masculine. Space / Density. Bass / Treble. Tension / Release. Love /
Isolation. Taking cues in texture & ambiance from American composers John
Cage, Morton Feldman, & Glenn Branca, while applying the more cascading
& visual concepts of European composers Maurice Ravel, Gyorgy Ligeti, Erik
Satie, & Karlheinz Stockhausen. We hear all of these elements through the
veil & color of analog synthesizers & rhythm machines from the early
1970s, resulting in the suspenseful & patient territory pioneered by the
hands of John Carpenter, Claudio Simonetti, Wendy Carlos, Klaus Schulze, &
Krzysztof Komeda. Symmetry is not Pop. Stripped it to its most primitive &
visceral core, this is music written for picture. Your life is the film &
this is the soundtrack.
Themes For An
Imaginary Film Recorded
April 2008 Through May 2011
Musicians:
Johnny Jewel / Piano, Synthesizer, Treatments, & Rhythm Machine
Nat Walker / Sequencer, Synthesizer, & Drum
Adam Miller / Guitar
Ruth Radelet / Voice
Achille Vettessi / Orchestral Percussion
Simone Adonai / Bassoon
Petrovka Makarov / Cello
Adriana Esposito / Viola
-Dan Joy
