jon glassett dawt calm

I recently added a new piece to my SoundCloud page. This one’s about a very traumatic event in my life.

 

 
As always, your feedback is welcome.

The Halloween season has been a little weird this year. We were hit with about ten inches of snow in a bizarre October storm that left us without power (or heat) for four days, including a certain very important day: October 31st. As a result, Halloween was postponed and the usual last minute prop-building and haunting activities were replaced by things like getting the furnace to run on generator power, getting enough outlets going to make coffee and charge phones, and grilling pots of water for baths.

But, for everything that seems to have gone wrong this year, one thing did go very, very right. That was my collaboration with Pumpkinrot on his short film entitled SWAMP FOETUS.

My secretive friend and his wife labored away on this thing for about nine months, building props, sets and characters, shooting (and re-shooting) scenes, editing, and finally sending a rough cut of the film to me for scoring a couple of months ago. I was completely unprepared for the spectacle that unfolded as I watched the early, incomplete edits of the film. I was so blown away, in fact, that it kicked me right into one of those “the music is writing itself” modes and everything fell right into place fairly quickly. Before I knew it I was sending rough tracks back to him and the final editing process began, with ‘Rot sending me updated versions of the film and me sending back tweaked and remixed versions of the score. A few versions later, we had a finished product.

The completed film was unveiled on Pumpkinrot’s site on the morning of Halloween as a nice little gift to his readers (link below). Here’s an MP3 version of the score:

Swamp Foetus Theme by VüFT

If you’d like to watch the film and read a bit more about it, you can see it at Pumpkinrot’s blog.

A new piece of music is up:

God of the Wires by VüFT

New music. A dark ambient synth improv started and finished within the last hour.

A Moment of Silence Is All We Can Bear by VüFT

Update: I’ve changed the Soundcloud settings so you can download the MP3.

Not a post about creativity but, rather, one featuring something I created: a weird piece of audio.

I was capturing samples for percussion loops and got carried away. The intent was to record the sound of tapping different objects in the room with a pair of pencils. When the tracks started adding up, I couldn’t resist combining, tweaking, and processing them as a single unit. It was a good time.

so i took them all by VüFT

By request, here’s an MP3 version of the music I wrote for Pumpkinrot’s 2009 haunt video.

LISTEN: Do You Believe in Witches?

Just a quick editorial note (not that everything on a blog isn’t editorial):
A matter of what most would consider political correctness has been on my mind since the start of this project and I’d like address it. Namely, it’s that the subject of this piece is a witch.

I have very dear friends who are Wiccans. Maybe you can already see where I’m going here. The thing is, the witch depicted so masterfully by Mr. Rot in the aforementioned video is of the old fashioned “terrifying hag, most likely consorting with Satan” variety. Many Wiccans find this depiction offensive, as it characterizes their faith in a decidedly negative way. The roots of Wicca trace back to the traditions and practices of many of those who were persecuted as witches back in the day, and some modern Wiccans cite this nasty old crone image as a lingering propaganda tool from a very dark time. In some ways they are right. At the same time, however, this image is one that has been somewhat secularized as it has become a part of American pop culture.

I wrestled with this notion when working on this project. I certainly don’t want to harm my friends–or anyone, for that matter–but it’s clear that some could be offended. I sympathize with that. I ask myself if it’s possible for a rational person to draw a connection between this gruesome caricature and the good, decent people I know who practice Wicca. The answer, unfortunately, is that even the most bizarre prejudices can be surprisingly enduring. Believe it or not, in the year 2011 it’s not 100% safe to assume that everyone knows Wiccans don’t sacrifice animals in the name of Satan and streak across night sky on broomsticks. Some people actually still think that’s true.

Personally, I believe there are few enough crazy assholes people who feel that way that it’s no reason to spoil a perfectly good scary story. What we’re talking about here is a dark take on a classic villain with far stronger connections to The Wizard of Oz than to  Joan of Arc or Bridget Bishop. In the end, I feel this a harmless indulgence of fiction and creativity and nothing more. Perhaps I’m naive but I believe no harm was done here. You may feel otherwise.

Lastly, for anyone reading who still sees the Devil lurking behind every pentacle, well…you also have my sympathies. Four centuries is a lot of catching up to do.

Here’s another new piece of audio. Be advised: I creeped myself out with this one. Or, rather, whoever wrote the patches for the soft synth I was using creeped me out.

I was playing around with two especially unsettling presets in Dimension Pro. Except for a few minor setting tweaks these are basically the straight up preset sounds shipped with the synth. They were so sick and captivating that I ended up writing six minutes worth of nightmare fuel.

I recommend listening alone in a darkened room with headphones and then going directly to bed (without saying your prayers).

Listen: Hell Hive

Like “Sketch #1″, this is a piece that was lost in the Great Blog Erasure of 2010. It, too, is an earlier effort. I barely had Sonar out of the box with this one but it seems like it turned out pretty cool.

The inspiration for “Phantom Satellite” was a story that a friend and I have been kicking back and forth for a while. It involves a massive, invisible structure orbiting the Earth and occasionally coming into view for certain unfortunate souls. The intent of this piece was to paint the moment when this thing appears in the sky.

Now, as much as I love that visual, someone once offered an even better one. After listening to it without the benefit of my little back story they said it sounded to them like being shot into space inside a coffin. I don’t think anything could have made me happier.

Listen: Phantom Satellite

This is a recording that I originally published here a year or two ago. It fell down when I accidentally broke my site. Lucky for me, I have occasionally had the wisdom to back up certain things.

The sound quality is a little rough–even rougher than my newer stuff, if you can imagine that–as I was just barely beginning to understand the ins and outs of computer-based recording. I still clearly have a lot to learn, but it’s sort of encouraging to hear something like this because I can compare it to newer projects and actually detect something that sounds like progress.

I still like the tune, though. Like a lot of the stuff I do on my own it’s in the ambient vein. Think “music for movies that don’t exist yet” and you might get an idea of where I’m coming from.

Listen: Sketch #1

Here’s a new piece of dark ambient music. I was thinking about UFO sightings and alien abduction stories.

Listen: Lights in the Sky