Answers re: “Inconspicuous Consumption”

Many thanks for the good words so far.

>> is this about cannibalism over the internet? … This has the makings of a movie (If this is a true story - woah! <<

Yep, as Dnark noted, this is a genuine incident. It’s been in and out of the news for the past half-decade or so. If you Google the name ‘Armin Meiwes’ you’ll find out probably more than you’d ever want to know.

Most of the voice clips are excerpted from BBC news spots, rearranged in a sequence that seemed to provide the best narrative, in mini-chapters. (I’m a writer by profession, so approaching this from a narrative perspective seemed mandatory.)

Three of the clips were a friend who speaks German (so he’d do a credible accent) reciting Armin Meiwes’ own translated words: two from his Internet ads, another from court testimony.

As for the bookend clips…

>> I'm already frightened! More great vocal samples from God knows where?? <<
>> That intro vocal is just absolutely twisted. <<

Those are from an installment of a creepy, online flash-animation series called SALAD FINGERS. I came across this last summer, and used Audio Hijack to grab those two clips. As soon as I heard them, I knew I’d have to use them one day. In context, because of their demented childlike quality, they seemed to connect to the way Armin Meiwes had this nightmarish fantasy going on in his head since gradeschool.

>> Is the music bed made from samples or did you program it on a synth? <<

Dnark thought it might be samples, but that’s a synth patch I did on my Roland JP-8000, and dubbed ‘Klangensphere.’ Noise for Osc 1, triangle wave for Osc 2, oscillators synced and ring-modulated, and using LFO 1 on the sawtooth setting to give it that continuing attack. But it’s one of those weird patches that feels alive and jittery, with volume and resonance peaks that rise and fall, and ranging from pleasantly subdued to quite harsh. No performance controls at all … it’s totally in the way the patch behaves.

What’s there is a one-take audio recording of me improving slow chordal and linear movement at the keyboard, unbroken except for a single edit + crossfade for time.

>> Might I ask which synths you used? <<

In addition to the JP-8000, I used a couple things from Spectrasonics Atmosphere, plus the granular feature of Absynth 3 to process that snarly bit under the interlude that kicks in around 3:03. Several things got prepped in BIAS Peak.

>> The harsh, incessant bell-like sample is an effective, sepulchral evocation of funeral bells, at least for me (if you didn’t mean that, at least for me it also evokes it) <<

Perfectly valid interpretation! For me, because of the way it needles in and out, I thought it was nicely symbolic of the unrelenting, insistent nature of Armin Meiwes’ obsessions. Again, it stems from being a writer. I often approach sound in terms of symbolism, character, location, etc.

>> The sounds are dark, like the story being told. <<

That was a point of chagrin for a while. As it was coming together, I kept thinking, ‘Ah, everybody else’s stuff is going to sound so much brighter than mine.’ I tried using some brighter sounds, but it just didn’t work. The thing really seemed to want to be dank and grimy, like it was a transmission beamed in from the radio equivalent of VIDEODROME. Still, despite a fairly high MP3 bit rate, it does seem to have lost some crispness and depth.

Cheers,
Brian
http://www.brianhodge.net