The sixth track from Smear Campaign was also the sixth in line to be finalized. The name comes courtesy of a demo reel James Phillips was putting together for a DVD pitch, which was entitled If Looks Could Kill. I'm not at liberty to divulge information about the DVD other than the fact it starred Debra Ades (who also appears as Ashley in Relentless) and it was seemingly paranormal. I do not know the entire story, so it's actually a projection regarding the paranormal aspect.
In discussions of If Looks Could Kill, James and I would often abbreviate it to ILCK, which I would always want to type as LICK. Out of this small quirk came the idea for a piece entitled Looks I Could Kill.
The track which shows up on the album was not the original arrangement. The piece began similar to Through A Corrupted Mind in that it's basis was a completely assembled clip. The piece used was from a clip of ILCK, which come out okay but far from worthy of the album. Oddly enough, the final album track only includes a single item from the ILCK score, a rather eerie drone.
The main melodic loop hails from the electronic track A Shaded View, which was initially created for a fashion video by Nigel HoSang. In the original track this part plays a more supportive role than the forefront placement it is given in Looks I Could Kill.
There is a second clip from A Shaded View which is used to enhance the bell tone layer. It is a fairly gritty and gated synth patch which ultimately goes hand-in-hand with the melody. I purposely adjusted these two layers out of sync, to create certain moments of tension as the chords progressed.
The corrosive portion which basically takes over the entire track in the end was created using the guitar setup seen on my home page. For this setup I placed small wooden beads onto each of my strings and used some magnetix to drive the strings and pickups. The majority of motion was from repelling pieces attached to the strings with a magnet in hand. The final sound clip used for this piece was actually the same loop used in the beginning of the original Relentless teaser trailer.
This track was one of the most fun to create and is also the one which is easiest for me to lose myself in. The droning melody is so hypnotic, easing me into a lull. It is a fantastic retreat from the haunting darkness, or at least it would appear as such.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
With Tortured Affection
Smear Campaign's fifth track, With Tortured Affection, was created exclusively from pieces of the track Nowhere Safe. The title was one of my entries into the Name My Horror Film contest. This title seemed quite suiting for the track in that it was created from a part of the film's score.
There are a couple of elements making up the barren soundscape at the root of this piece. The first is the acoustic percussion section, which was elongated to build the lower, more distant portion of the desolate wind layer. The second was the glitch industrial drum portion appearing in the first half of Nowhere Safe. This part was manipulated in a similar way to create the higher wind sounds. The idea was to give a true feeling of emptiness.
The melodic content comes courtesy of a very harmonically rich bowed glass segment. The instrument was not capable of producing a strong defining root, which resulted in a very dissonant and unsettling drone. This melodic layer is brought in and out of the foreground, again to try and portray an image of desolation.
The harsh buildup is a heavily manipulated layer, which consists of a good amount of distortion from Kombinat and a very high reverb send level. The basis comes from a small atmospheric clip buried in the mix of Nowhere Safe. This just proves that you should never leave a stone unturned when designing sound, you could very well miss the gold.
The melodic ending is pretty much a verbatim copy of the bell-like ending to Nowhere Safe, only on a much longer scale. I felt a bit of beauty was needed to complete the portrayal.
The overall process was quite similar to creating The Deepest of Black Waters, which I tend to think of as the older sibling to With Tortured Affection.
I suppose that With Tortured Affection could be seen as a longing. That being without a person makes the world feel cold and bleak, like being alone in a barren land surrounded only by dirt and skeleton trees, the only sound being that of the frozen wind. The more serene ending is somewhat like coming home.
There are a couple of elements making up the barren soundscape at the root of this piece. The first is the acoustic percussion section, which was elongated to build the lower, more distant portion of the desolate wind layer. The second was the glitch industrial drum portion appearing in the first half of Nowhere Safe. This part was manipulated in a similar way to create the higher wind sounds. The idea was to give a true feeling of emptiness.
The melodic content comes courtesy of a very harmonically rich bowed glass segment. The instrument was not capable of producing a strong defining root, which resulted in a very dissonant and unsettling drone. This melodic layer is brought in and out of the foreground, again to try and portray an image of desolation.
The harsh buildup is a heavily manipulated layer, which consists of a good amount of distortion from Kombinat and a very high reverb send level. The basis comes from a small atmospheric clip buried in the mix of Nowhere Safe. This just proves that you should never leave a stone unturned when designing sound, you could very well miss the gold.
The melodic ending is pretty much a verbatim copy of the bell-like ending to Nowhere Safe, only on a much longer scale. I felt a bit of beauty was needed to complete the portrayal.
The overall process was quite similar to creating The Deepest of Black Waters, which I tend to think of as the older sibling to With Tortured Affection.
I suppose that With Tortured Affection could be seen as a longing. That being without a person makes the world feel cold and bleak, like being alone in a barren land surrounded only by dirt and skeleton trees, the only sound being that of the frozen wind. The more serene ending is somewhat like coming home.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Through a Corrupted Mind
At this point in the album, we move from the most complex track to the least complex track. Through a Corrupted Mind, in title, is a homage to the character Vincent from the upcoming horror film Relentless. It is not just in title, however, that the track relates to this film.
The main sequence of Through a Corrupted Mind was actually the original idea for the opening piece of Relentless. Upon extending the opening I came up with a second theme, which I felt better suited the opening, leaving the original as an orphaned sound clip. Given my obsession with sound manipulation, I began experimenting with this clip. The basis of the track ended up basically being a version of the track played at a quarter of the speed.
On top of the melodic base, a noisy soundscape is superimposed. This harsh buildup was created from the atmospheric ending of the Relentless credit piece, Nowhere Safe. It's a heavily manipulated and stretched version, a process which helped to tame the abrasive tone of the original source.
Aside from these two layers, there is a semi-percussive layer which appears near the ending. This layer is created from three copies of a percussive section of a film cue run through Audio Damage's glitch plugin, Replicant. The layers have varied reverb and misc effect settings to give the sum a bit of depth. The three parts were trimmed and arranged as necessary, but were mostly dictated through the random nature of Replicant.
As I stated in the beginning, this was indeed the least complex manipulation on the album, though the effort which originally went into writing the base melodic layer was fairly high. This track just happened to benefit from an outtake of the soundtrack. It just goes to show how important a track's tempo can be, as the Smear Campaign version, in my opinion, is far superior to the original.
The main sequence of Through a Corrupted Mind was actually the original idea for the opening piece of Relentless. Upon extending the opening I came up with a second theme, which I felt better suited the opening, leaving the original as an orphaned sound clip. Given my obsession with sound manipulation, I began experimenting with this clip. The basis of the track ended up basically being a version of the track played at a quarter of the speed.
On top of the melodic base, a noisy soundscape is superimposed. This harsh buildup was created from the atmospheric ending of the Relentless credit piece, Nowhere Safe. It's a heavily manipulated and stretched version, a process which helped to tame the abrasive tone of the original source.
Aside from these two layers, there is a semi-percussive layer which appears near the ending. This layer is created from three copies of a percussive section of a film cue run through Audio Damage's glitch plugin, Replicant. The layers have varied reverb and misc effect settings to give the sum a bit of depth. The three parts were trimmed and arranged as necessary, but were mostly dictated through the random nature of Replicant.
As I stated in the beginning, this was indeed the least complex manipulation on the album, though the effort which originally went into writing the base melodic layer was fairly high. This track just happened to benefit from an outtake of the soundtrack. It just goes to show how important a track's tempo can be, as the Smear Campaign version, in my opinion, is far superior to the original.
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