Marcus Schmickler
"param". CD A-Musik, Cologne,
Germany
Unsuspecting lone
motorist passes through a tunnel and finds himself in the thick
end of a battlefield. Groaning iron rods hold up the sky, but suddenly,
they burst and all heaven hurls towards the earth. Two mothers stare
at each other withholding terrible rage, white knuckles clutching
baby strollers in a perverse struggle to get ahead of each other
in the supermarket checkout line.
Where sound and
psychological tension push and pull is where Schmickler lurches
forward and maintains these compositions. His technique of orchestral
scoring and computer processing may seem at odds until considering
film music which normally passes through various stages of scoring,
mixing, and processing until reaching the final celluloid cut.
My favorite places
in the CD happen when classical and electronic elements cancel each
other out, blending into a third undefined state. Track number four
uses horror film dissonance and stumbling piano and horn pips which
does not add up to anything but standard modern classical found
on any Sunday evening national public radio just after the Kronos
Quartet.
Track 9 however, defies its origins: choir or mothership?
In closing we hear
a repeating sound that could be automatic window rain wipers, or
voices in strange harmony. Calm and mundane, these moments are totally
cinematic: our motorist squints his eyes at the oncoming rain, and
adjusts the radio dial before resting back in his seat and cruising
for home. Beautiful and haunted.