NeoKitsch

I went to see Bartok’s ‘Duke Bluebeard’s Castle’ and Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’ with the English National Opera at the London Coliseum yesterday evening. I must admit, I really enjoy going to a performance, regardless of how bad the production is. Many critics write reviews urging you to leave during the interval, whereas I, a man who leads a sedentary life in front of computers in my music production studio and only has time to listen to music on Spotify and watch films from my weekly charity shop scavenge, absolutely loves the excitement of going out for a change. So, today I shall write a different kind of review. The kind that says: ‘go out and enjoy yourselves, the performance may stink, but what about all the joy and comedy you may get from overhearing others talk in the interval!”

Bartok’s opera is a beautiful and haunting work with a fascinating reworking of the old folk/fairy tale of Bluebeard by Bartok’s friend, the poet Balazs. Unlike the original 1697 tale of a wife-murdering nobleman, the many later adaptations, including the opera, transforms the traditional ‘overcoming the monster’ plot, to the psychological ‘loving the monster’ variation. The performance at the London Coliseum was sensitive and subtle – so quiet at times, that the coughing symphony of the audience began to take over for a while. As the tale evolves around only two singers, one location and complex psychological subtexts, there are few climatic outbursts. Despite this, I overheard a woman saying: ‘sometimes I can’t hear the words they are saying!’. I couldn’t help laugh a little, as the enormous display above the stage clearly informs us of the text, and what’s more, it couldn’t be more obvious. If you didn’t get the line “Kiss me Judith” or “Don’t open the door Judith” for the tenth time, then the music and action should also help if you’re a bit receptive.

I’ve always been intrigued by the type of people who attend these kind of performances. Apart from the usual, grinning, floppy haired enthusiasts and tipsy old gents you may bump into in the interval, there were a few interesting characters who caught my eye. A young man beside me in the back row was using his Macbook to arrange a score on the software Sibelius, an old man was sleeping in front of me and his wife was utterly embarrassed, too afraid to wake him should he cry out upon awaking, and a lady behind me, perhaps the one who couldn’t hear the words, uttered grunts of disgrace as the performers in the ‘Rite of Spring’ were literally raping the earth in dog masks with their trousers down. When it came to the part when men were swinging their genitals to the rhythm of the tribal staccato of the string section, I listened carefully in anticipation for the lady’s reaction behind me, but she was dead silent, and left me only to my imagination as to what her expression looked like.

I wish not to say any negative or positive points of the performance. See it for yourself. I only encourage you to enjoy going out to be part of the event. I often find it hard to be critical at times, when I know I’ve seen or heard some of the best performances in the world. After hearing Pierre Boulez conduct the Rite of Spring, I found it hard to appreciate the music in the same way, much like eating fresh tomatoes in Sicily and then returning to my local supermarket at home. After being bemused by the many visual interpretations of Stravinsky’s masterwork, I must admit that the Walt Disney version, depicting the birth and death of prehistoric, primitive life in the animation Fantasia, is the most satisfactory.

The NeoKitsch studio has an enormous amount of old recordings stored away in musty, dusty boxes. While rooting through hundreds of cassettes, records and reel to reel tapes, a few obscure, forgotten recordings were found. This discovery led to the new project entitled: ‘The Lost Record Series’. You will hear from time to time a badly recorded, incoherent babble from forgotten and discarded recordings. 

The first recording to begin the series was found on an old, unlabeled  tape which includes some funny, stupid and eerie performances by a deranged mandolin player. Here is an extract of this delightful find:

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Humtoo, an online music library and  film project marketplace, recently made NeoKitsch their featured artist. To get a closer look at the studio and the composer Danny Hahn, they decided to come round with a film crew to make a video interview to publish on the web. The video below is the result of the meeting with Humtoo.

NeoKitsch is a music studio in the heart of trendy Crouch End, London, which specialises in producing original musical scores, sound design, voiceover and foley for film and TV. Five albums have been released under NeoKitsch, some classical music, and some fusion electronic music, and they can be downloaded from iTunes and other leading stores.

NeoKitsch has been active in composing music for filmmakers worldwide including productions in LA, Milan, Berlin, Zurich, Hamburg and London, collaborating with names such as UK Film Council, The League Of Gentlemen, Arts Council England, Sky One and MTV, with works presented at BAFTA screenings and film festivals.
The NeoKitsch Blog is regularly updated with reviews and articles on unusual musical instruments, films and new music. You can check out all the serious and silly things NeoKitsch gets up to at: www.neokitsch.com

Current projects NeoKitsch is involved in includes the full score for the stage production of Frankenstein which will be performed in March (date and venues TBC). The lead instruments will be the Violin and Etherwave Theremin. 

NeoKitsch is a huge collector of unusual and vintage instruments, and the studio often uses acoustic stringed instruments such as the violin, mandolin, and cello. Some of the more far out instruments include the Omnichord, Micro Garden, Theremin, Circuit Bent Synths, and Stylophone. Among the hard to find, vintage gear NeoKitsch collects, are the Moog Rogue, Yamaha CS10, Korg MS2000B, Roland JV1080, and the famous Roland TB-303. NeoKitsch also uses more modern synths, although arguably, they tend to lean towards the nostalgic 70’s and 80’s sounds. Some of these modern machines include the Elektron Monomachine and Machinedrum, and the Sid Station.

NeoKitsch is familiar with composing music for a wide range of different genres, but the speciality genre seems to lean in the direction of classical music for violin and piano, fused with electronic glitch and experimental music.

The NeoKitsch studio is run by one person, Danny Hahn, but he often collaborates with classical musicians and specialists in fields which help broaden the possibilities of composing music. 

When NeoKitsch is composing with computer software such as ProTools, Max MSP, Logic and Sibelius, novelty Midi controllers are often used such as the Monome. Interesting videos of some of the weird instruments NeoKitsch uses, including the Monome, can be found on YouTube and on the NeoKitsch blog.

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You are invited to listen to a new piece from the Sawaii-Fi genre: “Lost in Translation”. The music was improvised on a detuned violin, a ukulele, the Theremin, Slide Guitar, the casio SK1 sampling keyboard, and it also includes vocal performances and a seagull.

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Among the many entries on the NeoKitsch blog, you may stumble upon an odd genre called Sawaii-Fi. Here is a brief description of what you might expect from a NeoKitsch Sawaii-Fi project.

What is Sawaii-Fi?

Sawaii-Fi is where Hawaiian and Science Fiction music meet, and it is used in many other art forms as well. It is a fusion genre, which takes its influences predominantly, although not limited to, music and films from the mid twentieth century. The ideals and wonders of Hawaii and the hula girls during its franchised frenzy bring the element of paradise to its many mediums. The fears and mysteries of Science Fiction during the ‘Red Scare’ frenzy bring horror to its mediums.

Sawaii-Fi’s origins.

The musical style of Sawaii-Fi evolved from linking the not too dissimilar glissando way of performing its instruments: the Slide Guitar and the Theremin. Its musical form was the starting point for the genre, although early forms of Sawaii-Fi have been known to exist. From then on, music, film, art and writing became popular methods of expressing the marriage of two victims of spoof, out dated genres.

Sawaii-Fi in story form.

In terms of story telling, Sawaii-Fi tends to battle between two divergent themes: paradise under threat from tyrannical outsiders, (Hawaii invaded by extraterrestrial life) or oppressive invaders reformed through the seductive lure of paradise (extraterrestrial monsters co-exist harmoniously with local villagers).

Sawaii-Fi’s influences.

The most successful attempts at this genre are influenced by the more lowbrow variety of its predecessors. Since mainstream cinema’s recent surge of ‘remakes’ and genre rehashes, Sawaii-Fi fell into the neo-kitsch subculture with ease.

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One of the favourite instruments in the NeoKitsch studio, is the Moog Etherwave Theremin. For those of you who are new to this fascinating instrument, here is a quick description:

The theremin (/ˈθɛrəmɪn/^[1]), originally known as the aetherphone / etherophone or termenvox / thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, ProfessorLéon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928. The controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which sense the position of the player’s hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.

The theremin is associated with an eerie sound, which has led to its use in movie soundtracks such as those in Spellbound, The Lost Weekend, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Theremins are also used in art music (especially avant-gardeand 20th- and 21st-century new music) and in popular music genres such as rock.

The video below demonstrates the different tones you can produce when cutting the higher frequencies of the Theremin, using the Moogerfooger Low Pass Filter. The filter was controlled by a foot pedal, to enable both hands to control the volume and pitch at the same time. The music was recorded in the studio using the Elektron Monomachine and Machinedrum, with performances by David Way and Danny Hahn on violin and Theremin .

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