voices #35
◦ “voices” is the place where we ask, artists reply and you read.
here we got:
Akira Film Script
answering some questions. We have already observed his drone / ambient work here.
[1. IDEA]
■ The A. O.: The track from “Autumn’s Dawn” that we prefer is “Capturing The Flag”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
► Akira Film Script: The whole album is built from meditations on my youth – before each session, I’d do an extended meditation on some point in my childhood, pre-internet, then upon exiting the meditation, I’d go straight to my machines and document how I felt, in sound. ‘Capturing the Flag’ was created when exiting a meditation focused on the final moments of actually, finally, successfully capturing and delivering the other team’s flag in an intense game of Capture the Flag, ultimately winning the game. When I was a kid, before the area I live in today had become so built up, there was this incredibly large field, with a large ditch running through it (in hindsight, it may have been a water way for when the rains came through, letting excess runoff out to the bay). The ditch became our midline, and we’d establish our forts on either side of it, then raise our flags. It was a winding ditch, so there were plenty of areas to pass though it and emerge on the other side without being caught – if you were lucky; there wasn’t much coverage up top of the ditch on either side, save a few bushes and overgrown fox tails. If you were lucky enough to make it to the opposing team’s fort, unseen, then the real fear set in – now you had to successfully get back to your fort. This was a nerve wracking experience, filled with anxiety, fear, dread, heightened senses – true fear. But if, and when, you saw you were in the home stretch, guaranteed to win, all the dread washed away for instant euphoria – YOU DID IT! YOU MADE IT! That was the moment that I set out to capture in ‘Capturing the Flag’ – the glory of a successful round, the washing away of the fears, the true elation of victory, and not in hindsight, but in, and of, the moment itself. Harps have always felt heavenly to me, and I love a rising portamento synth or string and how it can lift a movement in a song, so the combination of both were my target for capturing that feeling, that moment, of capturing the flag. Add to it, somehow drone-based ambience has always felt like a moment in suspension to me, so while I could have composed an uplifted, rising musical movement in hopeful keys and progressions, it suited the capturing of the moment – the polaroid nature of it all – to make a drone around these uplifting inputs.
[2. CREATION]
■ The A. O.: How do you usually approach composition? Do you start with a concept, a sound, a state of mind or what else? How do you generally proceed from the initial seed to the complete work?
► Akira Film Script: I’m one of those musical weirdos who believes he’s channeling creativity from, or for, the universe itself. I’m so deeply compelled to create constantly. I’ve had to force myself to stop creating to focus on other essentials, like releasing material, or playing live shows. Left to my own devices, I’ll just keep tapping the universe and composing. Sometimes it starts with an idea, or a “what if” sort of hypothesis, and other times it’s more about a melody trapped in my head and wanting to get it out. Sometimes I listen to the music of my influences and peers, and from deep immersion, I go to work very inspired from what I’ve just absorbed. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to my creative approach, and I believe that’s what makes my projects so incredibly diverse, and my output somewhat continuous. As for timing from start to finish, that’s also a wide delta; some songs are done in one take, all live, and if nothing stands out, then it’s a wrap. Others admittedly take 15-20 takes, and can take hours across days to mix from the live takes. Some are DAW-focused exercises that require hours of fine editing that can go on for weeks, months, even a few have graduated to the years mark now – usually due to ear fatigue, and needing time away before returning (and sometimes being unearthed after being forgotten about). Generally speaking I have 10-15 working compositions at any time, all in various states of completion (not including remixes, album mixes, DJ mixes, and other audio ephemera). Then of course there are the songs that are complete, but I just don’t know it yet – these take months to deduce; after trying everything, I realize it already had all it needed. These are tricky little buggers; making you think they were in want/need of more, but were whole the entire time, just in need of some creative mixing and editing.
[3. FEEDBACK]
■ The A. O.: What do you hope listeners feel or experience when engaging with your music?
► Akira Film Script: Transcendence. Not unlike proper Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I create celestial-inspired ‘worlds’ to escape to, but never forget, they are rooted in the here, and now. These are informed pieces, with a direct intent to transcend this time and place.
[4. IDENTITY]
■ The A. O.: In a world saturated with digital music content, how do you try to keep your sound distinct and personally meaningful?
► Akira Film Script: Admittedly, I’m a part of the problem with saturation of digital media. I don’t have a distinct sound that I focus on, outside of “general electronic musics” – I intake a wide berth of sonic influences and output a wide berth as well. Sometimes I’m working purely in noise and experimentation, sometimes I’m doing traditional Detroit-inspired techno, sometimes UK-inspired electronic stylings, sometimes Chicago-styled house, and as I’m best known for, various styles of Ambient music, from drones to melody-driven beatless compositions, and everything in between. I was discussing this with a colleague the other afternoon, whereby he asked me if I was concerned with the range of sonic palettes I release under my artist name, and if it would confuse listeners, and as such, was I better off to delineate them under different artist names? I told him I was faced with this conundrum when I first launched the Akira Film Script project in late-2019. Here’s how I looked at it: I could be like Richard D. James and release under specific monikers, under specific labels, where each different artist name represented a specific facet of my sound, or I could be like Jim O’Rourke and have everything I release, label and sound agnostic, be under my one chosen artist name – I obviously chose the latter. Are there days I wish I’d gone the other route? Sure, but then again, everytime I learn about a new Kieran Hebden alias project that came out a few years back, I’m reminded why I chose the route I did. All this said, and recognizing I might be a part of the problem, every work I make, regardless of sonic palette, is deeply imbued with personal feelings, experience, memories, and meaning. Every song title represents something to me, about that composition, it’s place, it’s time, it’s creation. I believe channeling from the universe in my creations imbues them with energy beyond myself, passed through myself, then on to the listener, regardless of genre or stylings. Everything I create and release is so deeply meaningful to me, and being largely instrumental music, I just hope that meaning metaphysically transfers from my creations to your ears, in a way it makes or inspires memories and moments for yourself to connect with the sounds in your own way.
[5. INFLUENCES]
■ The A. O.: Mention 3 albums that you consider relevant to your musical path and why.
► Akira Film Script: Only 3!? Ok, here we go…
○ Tatsuro Yamashita – For You
I was blessed to grow up just south of San Francisco, California. Not only being an international cultural, business, and artistic hub, it was a social cultural melting pot, even in the 80s and especially in the 90s. As I grew up, more populations and their cultural influences moved in, and it was beautiful – what a time to be alive! Asian culture, of every kind and corner, became a part of daily culture here, and as such, I was introduced to international music at an age that I’d never have experienced anywhere else. Tatsuro Yamashita happened to be a favorite of a good friend’s dad when we were kids, and he’d have it on when I’d come over to play on Saturday mornings. To this day, one lick of pretty much any Tatsuro song sends me right back to his house, in that family room, the way the light entered through the blinds, hell, even the smell of the house – that careless, light, breezy Saturday morning vibe his father thrived on; his goofy smile as he’d dance around while doing the dishes while his wife looked on in mortified embarrassment and would tell him in Japanese that he was making a fool of himself in front of the neighbor kids, to which he’d just laugh and dance and sing harder (he was no Tatsuro, but he held his notes well enough). I strive to this day to create something, anything, that someone will connect with in this manner. If I can make even 1 single song that some 30 years later someone would hear the opening notes and be transported, then I’ve lived up to my inspiration from Tatsuro.
○ Ken Ishii – Jelly Tones
Thinking in the same vein of early access and international influences, Mod Lang is a record shop that used to be in Berkeley, California that specializes in imported records, CDs, tapes, etc. that was a regular hangout for me and some music loving friends in high school (before they moved to another town). I’ll never forget getting some of my earliest electronic albums from around the world from the racks at Mod Lang. I still can remember the interior, the sections, the face-outs, the posters…everything. Discovering Ken Ishii and his music had a profound impact on a young me. I’d never heard someone imbue such experimental sounds with experimental beats and loops in the way Ken did – it was all the Detroit-stylings it needed to be, but it was wildly, uniquely Japanese too. Equally dancy and equally heady, it was, and remains, one of the single greatest statements of electronic music in my experience. This is one of a few albums I look to from that period when making more stylistically diverse albums today. At 00:01 AM precisely on November 1st 1995 a new type of electronic bomb exploded over the metropolitan area of Tokyo, spreading its shockwaves over the rest of the world in circles. That shockwave still ripples to this day.
○ Monolake – Hongkong
A young me had no idea what a field recording was. No idea of ASMR. I was sonically aware of them, but not conceptually. For me, something like Monolake at the time was presented like an electronic music version of a Wu-Tang mid-album skit; you’d hear the sounds of the streets, people, birds, life, activity, but it wasn’t set to some backdrop beat and dudes talking shit about something. Monolake felt like the field recordings wrapped seamlessly into the music – not unlike The Orb at the time, for that matter, just less “talkie” than The Orb, which I preferred at that period of my youth. ‘Hongkong’ felt like it lived somewhere in the Blade Runner ethos. The opening track ‘Cyan’ alone feels like moving through a night market of synthetic wild animals on a relatively calm evening in an otherwise bustling Los Angeles 2019. Much like the KLF’s singular ambient outing, Monolake really let the fields tell a story with the music perfectly across the album. As well, it’s my understanding that the creation of this album effectively led to the development of Ableton Live, so extra influential bonus points for that stroke of brilliance. While I’ve gone on to fall in love with other field recording-centric, or even outright field recording albums, I can say without a doubt that Hongkong was the inception point for my interest in fields accompanying music, and why I utilize that practice to this day. I will always strive to create something as perfectly composed (in my opinion) as the composition ‘Mass Transit Railway’.
[6. REGARDS]
■ The A. O.: Leave us with a quote you love.
► Akira Film Script: “Climb one mountain, find yourself at the base of another. How far are you willing to climb?” (unknown)