Max Cooper - Contour 輪郭 (Soundtrack for the short film by WOW)
Max Cooper made a score for this short film by Japanese creative studio, WOW.
- I had a load of fun with this scoring project. The video was so mad and so intense, it lent itself perfectly to what I was feeling I really wanted to do musically at the time, so I jumped straight in with my synths, distortion pedals and granular effects and let it all rip, trying to jam along to this bloke getting swallowed into the psychedelic underworld. - said Max, and he continued: - The video is amazingly well created too, I love the comic book feel and the bold use of colours and edits alongside beautifully detailed renderings. I tried to complement all of those elements with my own musical ideas, syncing lots of detailed granular live jams (using a Lemur patch linked to Granulator 2 which was built by none other than Llyr) to the contortions and manglings of the lead character as he goes through his beautiful ordeal. And I aimed for the big classic screaming synth approach which seemed to ooze from the style of the video. The mix was tricky as a result, the whole thing was a barrage and I wanted to maintain that intensity at the same time as hearing the detailing which would be best heard amongst a stripped back mix, so there was a delicate balance to be found. I love the project, big thanks to everyone at Wow Japan and Dimension Studio for getting me involved, it was a pleasure working with you all. I also chatted to them about the title, which seems to be one of these interesting terms whose translation between Japanese and English is not absolutely precise. The term, "contour" in this context, is primarily used to refer to the boundary between the human and their world, and the alternative world. It is about the structure of that interface and what lies beyond our everyday experience, as opposed to the English meaning where the focus is more on the surface itself. I hope I've got that right, perhaps some fluent English and Japanese speakers can help with that translation of ideas further in the comments. -
Ryo Kitabatake of WOW added: - First of all, we'd like to thank Max for joining this project and giving us great inspiration all the time through the whole production. The expression in the film drastically changed after we received his initial track. We were so excited to see how our imagination was enhanced by his music and reflected them in the visuals. We believe that this film has a certain energy by the synergy of Max's and our creativity. We hope audiences will feel and enjoy it. Once again, it was incredibly thrilling to work with you. Thank you, Max! -
As a bonus here is an another recent video, made by Polish animator Ksawery Kirklewsk for Max Cooper’s remix of Hanging D by Joep Beving.
- For this video I was inspired by the idea of "data excavation" – an imaginary scenario of future generations travelling back in time – possible thanks to the archives of data that we generate today. - Ksawery Kirklewsk
