Music – Musique concrète
Thursday
Jun 18, 2009
The theme music for the show was created by Derek Cronin from sounds made in his kitchen using food and kitchen utensils, performed by Derek and Michael Lemass. This musical approach comes out of the “Musique concrète” (French for “concrete music” or “real music”), movement started in the late 1940s which means that real world sounds are used rather than being restricted to those of traditional musical instruments.
We were inspired by a number of modern “Musique concrète” musicians and tunes such as Bjork who made the music for the Lars Von Trier film “Dancer In The Dark”. The original soundtrack CD is called “Selma Songs” and uses real world sounds of machines, basketballs and runners moving around a basketball court. Tom Yorke of Radiohead sang on the album with her though we are not sure which machines, runners or basketballs he operated!
Bjork later expanded on her dribbling techniques with her collaboration with the German duo Matmos on her album Vespertine, Matmos, who have been known to use the sounds of amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, slowed down whistles and kisses, liposuction surgery, rat cages, cards shuffling, frequency response tests for defective hearing aids and rhinestones on a dinner plate which we would have done too but we were making music for a series about food and therefore had a framework but in truth we felt free to use anything after looking at what Matmos had been using!! They’re nuts!!!
Other “Musique concrète” inspired musicians spring to mind too such as Tom Waits using dustbins and lump hammers on metal piping and also stuff by Steve Reich such as Different Trains and Baka Beyond’s rainforest sounds.
But our series was all about food and therefore would be restricted to food dribbling related things performed in a kitchen, sure where else would we go for an authentic taste-bud-triggering-kitchen reverb?!
Anyway, I arrived at Derek’s gaff one morning(not too early now, he is a musician after all) equipped with Schoeps and DPA microphones, a SoundDevices sound mixer, Fostex hard disk recorder, Sainsburys organic carrots(one of the clearest, most transparent sounding carrots in the world if not the universe), celery, cucumber, red and green peppers but no orange ones, apples, pepper grinder, eggs(organic ones give a better crunch sound), a frying pan, my favorite noisiest saucepan and beer(which Derek doesnt drink, so I had to drink any bottles we opened! I had to!! He wouldn’t help me at all!). Actually, now that I think of it, one of the hardest things to get a good recording of was a beer bottle being opened. We had to open so many in the end that I had to get a taxi home, a few days later!
We had a lot of fun trying out different objects to see how they sounded and what would be the most evocative of food and cooking. It reminded me a bit of a percussionist I saw called Trilok Gurtu performing at the New Morning Jazz Festival. I thought “that guy must spend all his time off just going around hitting things just to see how they sound”. He was sitting on the New Morning stage with all sorts of drums and pots and pans but it seemed that day he was especially interested in hitting a cymbal and dipping it into a plastic bucket of water, a blue bucket if I remember correctly. I suppose there is a musical aspect to every object especially a percussive one when you make it ring by hitting it. Perhaps its only percussionists who discover those new sounds, and boxers too I suppose!
So back in the kitchen with Bjork, Tom Yorke and Trilok in the back of our minds we recorded the gas being turned on, the gas lighter, the whoosh as the gas lites(like in “Panic Room”), a saucepan going on, water being boiled, a glass of water being filled, glasses being clinked together, then we filled the glasses for different pitches. We boiled the kettle. we made toast and blended something undrinkable in the blender. We bit into celery and carrots and chopped them up too. We filled up wine glasses to different levels and rubbed the rim to get eerie tones which we didnt use in the end but they were interesting to hear all the same. Eerie tones that are now waiting in Derek’s sampler for the right horror film to be made…..
The bubbling we got was a really nice sound to listen to, a bit like a cat purring and the frying sounds had to be the most evocative of food to the point where I could smell what was being fried even when I was listening to the sound playing back through my speakers!
We made tea for our tea break cus we were tired of all the hard work and forgot to record it! We captured the pressure escaping from a beer bottles and the fizz of the bubbles as it was poured into a glass and then thought perhaps we could get a better take…..
“Eh try opening another bottle there Michael” said Derek
“Oh, ok if you insist” said Michael
We made toast and fried eggs which someone had to eat and then we had ice cream, not cus it makes a good sound but because it just tastes great! Green and Blacks organic of course!
It sure was a fun way to make music and discover new “musical instruments”! We were stuffed by the end of it and so was my recorder! Just as well “Musique concrète” doesnt mean music made out of concrete! We’d have no teeth left and terrible indigestion!!
And I cant hide the truth I suppose………
…… many, many vegetables were grievously harmed and very tasty in the making of this music!!
“Its not cus I love animals that Im a vegetarian,
its just that I really hate vegetables!!”
( thanks for that one Phil! 
)