Kraken by Pierrot Desperes
Kraken was originally performed live in sound and analog video synthesis at CBGB in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 18, 2023. This recording was created from two live rehearsals for that performance.
Kraken is a sound work inspired by Russell Hoban’s novel, The Medusa Frequency. In this book Hoban retells the Orpheus myth as a search for lost love as well as creative inspiration. The main character, Herman Orff, is an author suffering from writer’s block. In an effort to trigger his creativity he has his head charged with an electric current that is synchronized to his brain waves as he listens to a sonic pattern from a Fairlight synthesizer.
After undergoing this procedure Orff is plagued by hallucinatory encounters with Orpheus who appears to him in spherical objects. During these reveries are sounds of crashing waves, crackling voices, clanging bells, goats, footsteps, rain and screaming birds. Through looping, overdubbing, granulation, bit crushing and feedback of representative sounds from my collection of field recordings, Orff’s phantasmagorical wanderings were sonically reproduced in my work.
Other figures from mythology also appear in Hoban’s story including the Kraken who torments Orff on his computer screen as he attempts to write. The Kraken was generated in my work from the droning audio output of a Gieskes Oscillatoscope. In the live show audio was input into this video synthesizer to modulate the evolution of patterned video images.
This sound work features field recordings from my collection of sounds gathered in Michigan, Missouri and Florida. The album cover image of twisted tree roots was taken in Jefferson County, Missouri, at the bottom of an abandoned swimming pool at the site of the third location of the Famous-Barr Outing Farm. Kraken is an octopus-like sea monster derived from the Norwegian word for a crooked or twisted tree.
Trigger Warning: Certain passages of this sound recording may induce frisson in those susceptible to ASMR.
Tracklist
| 1. | Kraken | 18:41 |
Credits
Recorded, composed and mastered by Pierrot Desperes
