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(03.15.05) Canada’s Objective-Subjective is in the process of releasing a 12-part
EP series based around Alan Moore’s groundbreaking graphic novel,
Watchmen. A revolutionary take on the superhero mythology that
ably deconstructs and reconstructs the very idea of responsibility and
necessity inherent in the super-human ideal, Moore’s Watchmen
was filled with death, despair and degradation. The very veil of
society has been ripped clean off a long time ago in Moore’s world.
The heroes cling to the last shreds of human possibility, struggling
to find hope in the decaying world surrounding them.
Matthew Dixon’s efforts at Objective-Subjective (the label name is
even a nod to the graphic novel) is to provide an experimental
soundtrack to the work. The Watchmen Series is 12 EP releases, each
one beholden to the contents of one of the 12 chapters of the novel
(which originally ran as a 12-issue maxi series) and each chapter is
composed by a different artist. The latest releases in the series are
Chapter III as constructed by Coin Gutter and Chapter X as
transmogrified by Vox Barbara.
Chapter III deals with isolation, the first part of the pirate story
within the story and with Dr. Manhattan’s realization of the mental
and physical exile forced upon him by his transformation. The
landscape becomes more surreal, more detached from the ordinary
reality and, as Coin Gutter’s impression of this chapter progresses,
the sounds of the streets — the captured voices and radio signals of
human existence — become subsumed under a growing cloud of
destructive noise. The titular reference of the EP’s title is written
on the wall of an abandoned base in Arizona, the old atomic testing
facility where Dr. Manhattan was last human, and, attached to the same
bulletin board is a picture of himself before his ascendance into his
more evolved state. The building is destroyed, everything is bereft
of human occupation and life, and yet Dr. Manhattan finds a thread to
his humanity here. Amidst the strangeness and charm. Coin Gutter’s
work is filled with both characteristics, wails of structured noise
and fragments of abandoned glitch and fractured vocal samples. Their
contribution to the series effectively captures the decay of reality
into chaos and discord. And yet, in the end, the noise of At Play
Amidst The Strangeness and Charm is still organic, still made by
conscious thought. All that is undone can still be done again.
As Vox Barbara, Frank Smith collects sounds and takes them apart,
finding hidden echoes and strange sonorities that have lain undetected
within the physical shells. Sourced metallic echoes fill the
beginning of his single track EP. “Oh, How The Ghost of You
Clings…” is awash with nostalgia, rife with reverberations of
regret and distress. Hidden in the pipes that run beneath your floors
are all the gravid decisions you failed to properly realize and, late
at night, when you are most susceptible to the ghosts of your past,
the accusing voices of your in-decisions come up through the vents and
whisper stereophonically in your ears. Smith’s work has always been
riddled with ghosts, melodies that decay more quickly than they sound,
cadences that creak like forgotten street rhythms from buried cities
and slivers of shattered noise that are nothing more than the cut-up
soundtrack to our personal histories.
“Oh, How the Ghost of You Clings…” is a reference to a page
in the supplemental material of Chapter X, to a piece of advertising
copy for a cosmetics line called “Nostalgia” that is being retired for
something more aggressive and modern: “Millenium.” Smith’s soundtrack
is an echo of the old world faced with the new. As Nite Owl and
Rorschach come to realization that they may no longer have a part in
the new world order, we are left with a decaying handful of all that
we know. Vox Barbara is perfectly suited to give voice to the echoes
of a fading epoch and “Oh, How The Ghost of You Clings…”
persists in your mind by way of its sibilant whispers and dynamic
shards of compressed sound. It’s been a few years since the last Vox
Barbara release and I’m very happy to hear new material from Frank
Smith.
At Play Amidst The Strangeness and Charm and “Oh, How the
Ghost of You Clings…” are both out now on Objective-Subjective
in limited release editions.
