■ The A. O.: The track from “On the Grounds of Indecency” that we prefer is “This river”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
► Swoop and Cross: There is this quote in Ishiguro’s Never let me go: “I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.” The track is largely inspired in this idea of trying to hold on to each other in a turbulent world, hence the feathering in and out of sounds that try to overtake the looping motif that extends throughout the piece and that symbolises the attempt for stability, which keeps being disrupted by the flow in “this river”. From the starting idea, the track was then just a technical exercise of musical composition and layering. Like most pieces, it wrote itself.
■ The A. O.: The track from “Surveillance Film” that we prefer is “Nexus”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
► Modern Silent Cinema:Surveillance Film is my fifth score for filmmaker Matt Barry, and with each new score I like to try something a bit different from what I did before. In terms of the amount of recorded music, this would be the longest project yet–requiring nearly an hour of music. And so, to counter that scope, I wanted to reduce the compositional palette and work with repeated motifs and sounds as a fun creative challenge. At the time, I had recently seen Claus Boesser-Ferrari play guitar at Downtown Music Gallery in NYC, I was really struck by his performance, which embraced the totality of the guitar, the wood, the shape, the depth, the strings, every aspect of the instrument had potential for sound and he explored all of it, and for me that inspired a new relationship with the guitar (I’ve been playing for over 30 years). Claus greatly influenced how I approached this score, playing the whole guitar, and not just melodies and chords on the strings. It also inspired me to consider how other objects could be used for sound (I used my water thermos for percussion on several tracks). So, for “Nexus,” I started with a Philip Glass type of minimalist rondo, which originally appears earlier in the film but played on a thumb piano. I repeat it on multiple instruments throughout the score–but here it is played on a piano (technically on a MIDI synth, since I don’t have access to a real piano at the moment). I also wanted to do more than just repeat the melody, I wanted this to be its own piece, so I used an acoustic guitar to create scrapes, percussive bangs, and other twangs to create a soundscape as a musical counterpoint. Electroacoustic dynamics is an overarching interest for me–that intersection of a real instrument with electronic manipulations, and I try to explore that throughout all the Modern Silent Cinema albums. For “Nexus,” I wanted to contrast the serene piano melody with these more abrasive noise elements. I also wanted to have a contrast between the intentional, structured melody and the improvisation of the guitar sounds.
► That is unsettling in the most effective way. We find ourselves looking for an impossible dialogue between innate human fragility and the concrete crudeness of productive slavery. We move in an aural landscape where beauty and despair coexist, perfectly capturing the existential ambiguity of a world on edge.
► Yeah, this is clearly a river. Trembling strings provide a mournful, cinematic backdrop, while spoken-word fragments drift in and out like a memory echo, half-heard and deeply human. Each piano note adds both fragile purity and dissonance to the hazy atmosphere. The combination of these elements somehow generates a real masterpiece. Poetry needs to be unclear.
■ The A. O.: The track from “After the Slow Fade” that we prefer is “Footprints”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
► Craig Aalders: Footprints came to light in a moment of inspiration based around a particular sound combonation of electric guitar, modulation pedal, and tape delay. Compositionally it began with the opening trem melody that starts the track and continues throughout.
■ Genres: Electroacoustic / Experimental ■ Rating: 6.5/10 ■ Favorite track: “CANTO PER LA TERRA DI CANAAN”
► This track consists of four movements, blending modern sound design with echoes of Middle Eastern sonorities. What emerges is a space where tradition and abstraction intertwine. Fragments of modal melodies, resonant strings and woodwinds appear through layers of electronic processing, forming a tapestry that feels both ancient and futuristic.
► This is a weightless dream. We move seamlessly between the tonic and subdominant major chords in a vast atmosphere, that feels both intimate and infinite. Each moment dissolves delicately into the next, reminding us that beauty still exists and asks no questions.
■ The A. O.: The track from “Seven types of silences” that we prefer is “VII”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
►Marko Josipović: That track came to be similarly like all the other ones of the album. I found a motif or a melody on the guitar, then I would sit with it for some time, and the composition/arrangement would very naturally reveal itself through that. I often work very sporadically and like to jump from idea to idea, but this album unfolded quite linearly, so the piece had a “definitive” feel whilst making it. I remember I wanted it to feel like a forceful emergence from the sea, violent, but also purified at the same time, leaving just enough space for the things to come. That tension between violent transformation and a kind of subtle holiness is what I intended to run through the whole album. The imagery of water and sea also played a big role in how I shaped the sound of this album in general.
► Here there’s little to say: if you like ambient and/or electronic, allow yourself to listen to this. There are no falls, there are no negligible moments. This album can easily be considered an instant-classic of the genre. The experience is completely immersive and beneficial, we are facing 50 minutes and more of pure bliss. Simply one of the best works of the year so far.
