Live Human Target

On Friday, I went to Graham's apartment to record the guitar solo for "Spray it On," a musical piece in the middle of his film. This completed all my obligations towards the movie, and just in the knick of time too, as the mix is next week. So before we got started Graham was showing me some absolutely amazing animation from a DVD box set of Soviet propaganda videos. He specifically wanted me to see a short film called "Shooting Range." The first thing that you notice is the absolutely amazing artistry and production quality. The animation, set to an amazing free jazz/freak out soundtrack, is very reminiscent of that great creepy 70's psychedelic animation. Think some of the famous Sesame Street shorts like the pinball song or Fantastic Planet.

The video centers around a young middle-class worker who is down on his luck walking around Times Square with a cardboard sign around his neck saying "job wanted." A capitalist fat-cat, who I thought didn't look nearly semitic enough, lures him into his shooting range. First he is working happily as the guy who resets the targets, but those capitalists. They will find any way they can to exploit the good workers. So he starts shooting at our middle-class hero, and the capitalist gets the idea to promote a LIVE HUMAN TARGET for double admission. I won't go any further, I have embedded the video below. Graham and I were joking about the setting and tone of the cartoon as it seemed more Russian than American in its spirit, and the themes eventually feel pro capitalist. Also, I said, if only we really had shooting ranges where you can hit a LIVE HUMAN TARGET. Well, little did I know I was less than 48 hours from fulfilling my new life's goal.

Was I the only person unaware of Shoot the Freak? I didn't understand Kristin's message that she may show up to Coney Island early to "shoot freak," but didn't think to press the issue. After shredfest (it was fine, as unpopulated as we expected during labor day with no promotion and no headliner, but a bummer that more of our friends who were in town didn't come out) a whole crew of us went out to the boardwalk to enjoy the last weekend of an un-gentrified Coney Island. Sure enough, right there on the boardwalk was Shoot the Freak, where you can shoot a live human target, albeit with paintballs and not bullets. The ten bucks I spent on 35 paintballs (and a two dollar tip so the "freak can eat") was the best I spent all day. The sight on my paintball gun worked, and I unloaded my clip into him. I probably peaked a bit too quickly, but the adrenaline was flowing as every shot landed right on the freak. Unfortunately this meant I was just standing there as he taunted everyone with pelvic thrusts and I couldn't shoot the freak in the balls. But very awesome. Capitalism rules!

Faux Faust

Graham came over last night to create yet more music for his first feature film. He had cut an entire scene to a Faust song of dubious copyright, so like any industrious director decided we should sorta "re-create" the song for the scene.

At home using Fruity Loops, Graham built the entire drum groove and brought it over to the studio. First thing we did was upload the scene into Sonar. After the video thumbnails set themselves up we matched the loop to the timing of the scene. Then we found a nice analog keyboard sound to match the bass of the original track.

Then we went into our own thing. I'm a huge fan of DI'ing string instruments and building all of the sounds in post. Graham really wanted me to be insipired laying down the guitar parts by recording dirty. And he used dirty tricks to get what he wanted. He brought out of his bag the BUZZ BOX, a pedal he owns and knows I lust after. It is a pretty nasty sounding distortion which also has an octaver that goes two octaves below POORLY. I thought it would be fun to shred so fast that the pedal couldn't keep up and sadly it wasn't very hard. The octaver would chug along behind me at its own pace, sometimes hitting the right notes, sometimes not.

So this is how the guitar parts went. I did two tracks of Kraut Rock noodles completely DI'ed with the Buzz Box. Played back straight back through the monitors without any additional effects the sound was very reminiscent of early Butthole Surfers. I'm pretty psyched with it. As we speak Graham is adding vox, an e-bow track, and editing the whole thing together in his studio on a Pro-tools setup.

Between this, our doo-wop tune Spray it On, and the general noise weirdness we recorded, I think the soundtrack for this movie is going to kick tons of ass!