(11.18.04) Chris Ghiraldi has a wry sense of humor, a quiet hand that has skewed the world slightly and now the planet wobbles erratically on its axis. He records as Velapene Screen and his newest record, Medical Breaths, is a radio station transmission from this skewed world: wobbly, just off-center, and you can never quite get in sync with it. Childlike pop melodies lie in bed with cut-up vocal tracks and Speak ‘n’ Spell voices whisper subtle messages over beds of glistening ambient moon drops and fuzzed percussion while, elsewhere, finely attired balladeers struggle to keep their detached indolence when confronted by multiple time signatures and microphones that transform their luscious croons into digitized robot voices.
Ghiraldi is one of those fellows who finds creative release in the backlash from their day jobs. While he does professional editing for major electronic labels during the day, at night he sets aside all the modern radio format rules for song construction and indulges in sonic experimentation. Songs like “Can You Find My Mind, Suck It If You Do” loosely obey pop song requirements and certainly have the requisite hooks to infect your brain but the disparate elements all seek to fuse neural connections. Electronic voices hiccup and hesitate with abnormal patience while melodies infused with Boards of Canada style
innocence swirl in gaseous effervescence about a staggered foundation of crackling percussion. While you can’t sing along to it, you certainly can’t escape it as the song melts through all the cracks in your head and scatters itself across your brain.
“Tell Me Whys Tell Me Sweet Little Whys” (a lovely play on the Fleetwood Mac song) quivers with drum programming that skitters about the room as if it were afraid of the light while a duet of synthesizer and vibraphone roll about in a smear of Vaseline and rubbing alcohol. It has a simultaneous breath of ambient simplicity and the ragged hitch of caustic beat programming. “Devious Little Dustball” sneaks a Tyler Durden quote into your head (“This is the greatest moment of your life and you’re off somewhere else!”) like a time release capsule and buries it there beneath a thick layer of granulated beats, resonant bass thumps and slow melodies. “My Plot is Askew” flirts with blaxploitation funk, splicing a 1970’s throwback vibe to a gasping female voice wiped off the cover of an Ohio Players’ record. The resulting mutant experiment escapes and grows in strength the more musical history it devours.
Skewed, I tell you. It’s all slightly of phase in Chris Ghiraldi’s world and Velapene Screen is a direct interface to the alternate pathways data travels throughout his brain. Medical Breaths will cause hesitation in the emergency room. Dying patients will pause on the threshold and cock an ear towards the ceiling. Wait, they wonder, have I missed something? The charm of Velapene Screen is that it is just not quite what you expect.
Medical Breaths is out now on Frozen Empire Media.
- Frozen Empire Media
- Velapene Screen
