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Interview with Concrète Festival Musicians
Here's the written interview that was done for the Crosstown Arts newsletter. I've rescued it from the bottom of a big email from almost a month ago. None of us read the others' responses when we formulated our own and it's funny some of the similarities and emphases that pop up in unexpected places (or how at times we seem to be responding to each other, etc.).
In advance of the upcoming screening of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, live score composers Natalie Hoffmann, Robert Traxler, and Jaques Granger spoke with Crosstown Arts’ registrar Jesse Butcher about experimental music, horror films, and the DIY ethos.
We are beyond excited to speak with three notable stalwarts of the Memphis experimental music scene. Between your previous collaborative and individual projects, as of this writing, the three of you have released an astounding number of recordings. This undeniable passion and drive exemplified by your contribution to experimental music is amazing. What were your initial forays into this genre and the DIY lifestyle?
Robert: I'll break this one up into my initial forays as a listener and my initial forays as a performer. The earliest beginnings of my interest in experimental music started when I got into Sonic Youth back in high school. They completely changed the way I thought about music and it's where I began appreciating the musicality of non-“musical” sounds. That set off a chain reaction as I tried to go deeper and deeper into more experimental music over the years. An early foray into the type of experimental electronic music that I sort of see as the aesthetic heart of Memphis Concrète was getting a compilation of music from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (which, granted, is about the furthest thing from DIY in the institutional sense, but given that technology has changed so much in the past 65 years, that level of experimentalism can be adapted to a DIY ethos that wasn’t available then). That’s probably not the first real experimental early electronic music I got into, but it did leave a big impression on me fairly early on and really started my historical interest in early electronic music and musique concrète and trying to connect the thread to the kinds of music people are making now, and to see how many people here in Memphis or nearby are taking similar or adjacent approaches. Also, as an aside, I never would have dreamed I’d be able to have any sort of connection with a piece of music composed in 1964 (mostly) on the RCA Mark II synthesizer in the Columbia-Princeton center, so it’s pretty amazing to me to putting on a performance of Milton Babbitt’s “Philomel”. It was a revelation to realize that some (albeit not the majority) of this electronics-and-tape music was composed with a score for live instrumental (or vocal in this case) performance. So being able to feature Milton Babbitt’s and Olly Wilson’s music alongside friends and local musicians is really astounding to me.
Though I’ve been playing music for decades, it had mostly been in bands with a more-or-less rock-ish approach (though always DIY, I guess that mindset has always been there for me). I’ve always liked taking punk or post-punk music and pushing it into more experimental territory, but it wasn’t until I started putting on the first Memphis Concrète in 2017 that I actually approached making purely abstract, experimental music in earnest (not counting playing around at home some, but not doing much with it). So my entire solo project is exactly contemporaneous with Memphis Concrète.
Jacques: Robert and I have been playing in a guitar/bass/synth/drums post-punk band called The Family Ghost since 2001, and there’s been an experimental bent to that band’s work from the beginning that’s gotten more pronounced the longer we’ve gone on.
I started playing instrumental electronic music under the name Revenge Body in 2017, and I suppose I’d characterize some of that work as experimental as well. At times, it’s more abstract, repetitive, and abrasive than the work we do in the band, and my live sets typically include stretches of improvisation that can tend toward the chaotic.
I say all this with the caveat that I always have a hard time defining what is and isn’t “experimental” since something that seems out-there for one person might be utterly workaday for another.
I’ve been playing music since the mid ’90s, and all of my musical undertakings have been DIY. I’ve just never considered any other way of doing things and have probably never had any other option anyway. The members of The Family Ghost collectively engineer our own records, design their sleeves, and self-release them because we want total control of those processes, for example, and I’ve recorded most of my Revenge Body work myself, save for a couple of short-film scores.
Natalie: Thank you! I’m so flattered that I was asked to contribute my sounds to the live score! I got into DIY when I came across a zine on a table in a coffeeshop in my hometown, which led me to a venue having independent art and music shows. I’m forever indebted to that little zine with a screen printed wallpaper cover. I started playing in bands and pursuing artwork more seriously after that. I ended up in Memphis to study photography at Memphis College of Art and from there I met people playing music, ended up in punk bands, going on tour, and recording. I’ve played in Ex-Cult, Nots, and now I’m in Optic Sink. Optic Sink has been a great/challenging experience because I’ve been learning more about synth, electronic and experimental music. Though I’d say at my core I’m just always trying my best to write a catchy song.
In the composition of your upcoming live score, I’m interested in how you have been preparing as a trio. As professional musicians you have participated in collaborations in a variety of applications. How has the development of the score been as you navigate your personal musical inclinations?
Robert: We started by breaking the movie into thirds with each of us taking charge of one section. Then we’ve come together as a group, following the others’ lead for their respective sections. We also separated out the opening and closing credits and wrote the music for that as a sort of group/band effort. I think our personal inclinations come through in pretty obvious ways given how we each lead our own section. I also think splitting it up into smaller sections gave each of us a chance to work on more granular details than if we’d been looking at the entire movie at once. I’ve done a couple of live scores before, but they were improvised. Some things were worked out (just like there is still some improvisation in this live score), but the ratio was more flipped. I’m quite proud of all the work the three of us have put into making this sound really good. Also, it’s interesting to see what similarities we have running through our sections that weren’t planned out. We all kept a certain fidelity to the spirit of the original music (without repeating or rehashing it), while mixing our own style or vision with it.
Jacques: We opted to split the movie into thirds, with each of us taking the lead on a section of their choosing while the other two work within the structure established by the “lead” player. This working method has let us write in a more focused way than we otherwise would have been able to, to act in both lead and accompanist roles, and to let each of our styles show through to a degree. We wrote music for the opening and closing credits together in the room as a three-piece band. I can’t overstate how happy I am with this score, and how elated I am to be working with Natalie and Robert.
I’ve only ever written and performed one other live score, and that was to John Hough’s The Legend of Hell House in collaboration with my friend aster at Memphis Concrète 2018. We just got together in a room a couple of times and wrote to the movie while leaving lots of space for improvisation. It was a lot of fun, but it was a markedly different approach to the one this ensemble has taken with Halloween III.
Natalie: My only experiences soundtracking so far have been to do a live score with Optic Sink to Maya Deren’s films, which was such an honor and was so much fun. We exclusively collaborated on that one, we treated it like Optic Sink writing an album.
This one has been different and really cool with each of us taking a third of the movie and then collaborating. And this film has dialogue, so it’s more of a traditional approach to scoring for me since there isn’t music going over every second of the film, as it was with Maya Deren’s silent experimental films. It’s been so interesting hearing what everyone has come up with and adding small collaborative touches to each person’s section. And we came up with some stuff together for the opening and closing credits, so those have their own special collaborative flavor. It’s been a wonderful experience working with Jacques and Robert, they’re both wildly talented musicians.
In varying capacities, you are all involved with Memphis Concréte, a prominent event for international, national, and local experimental musicians. This festival chronicles one of the most vital aspects of this genre being the live performance. How have you acclimated from the manipulations allowed in home/studio recording to the tides of interpretation and potential improvisation of a live performance?
Robert: From the outset, I’ve tried to set up my live performances in a way that approximates the sort of collage work I’d want to do in the studio. I typically use my modular system for my live performances, which I set up in such a way as to accommodate as disparate a mixture of sounds as possible. It doesn't make it 100% of the way to what I’d be able to do in the studio without having to worry about the same time constraints, but it approaches it to some degree. And I think in turn the way I set up my patches for live performances influences the way I set things up for studio recording (although I don’t do nearly so much of that anyway).
And as an aside, I appreciate your remark on live performance being one of the most vital aspects of the genre. I feel pretty strongly about that as well. I mean, I wouldn’t put studio recording or live performance above or below the other in importance, but live performance is very essential in and of itself. When I put together Memphis Concrète as a virtual festival in 2021, I went through great pains to ensure that all of the performers would be able to stream live (and not just live stream a pre-recorded video). There were a lot of live-streamed shows during lockdown that were mostly different artists that had sent in pre-recorded performances, and I understand why as there really isn’t a good infrastructure for being able to have multiple streams into the same channel. It just felt important to me to be able to continue the spirit of actual live performance. I don’t even know if I can articulate why, but maybe I don’t need to. I’m glad to have done it.
Jacques: There’s essentially no difference between my studio and live setups—when I play shows, I just bring the equipment I need to play the set I’ve planned—so live performance doesn’t compromise what I’m doing in any meaningful way. I also always make it a point to bring equipment that facilitates unexpected sounds and improvisation, including an AM/FM radio and certain effects boxes, so that there’s an exploratory element to my live sets even when I’m mainly playing more structured material. My recorded work is “just so” even when it doesn’t necessarily sound that way, and I like for my live sets to be more extemporaneous than that.
And I couldn’t agree more with your comment about the vitality of live performance in experimental/electronic music. I feel that way about music in general, as corny as that might sound. There’s little I love more than playing shows and seeing shows. It brings me real joy.
Natalie: I 100% agree — there’s little I love more than playing music. Live performances are so special to me. I feel like they have an irreplaceable verve to them for both performer and audience. My Halloween III setup is essentially the same as my live setup for Optic Sink, I just took away guitar and vocals and added a synth and some found sounds. Me playing live on stage is pretty much the same as me playing in my studio at home. I usually just play all of the parts I’m going to play and learn the dance between my parts, and then bring that to the live performance / collaboration at practice.
And, I love that Memphis Concréte brings in experimental musicians and highlights people pushing the boundaries here! It’s an honor to be asked to participate.
You will be accompanying a presentation of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. I’m curious as to your collective interest and relationship to not only this film but the horror genre as well?
Robert: The crux of my interest and relationship to the movie (and why it was chosen to be part of the festival) is the original score. It’s easily my favorite musical work of John Carpenter’s (and I'd say his most abstract and experimental, which makes it feel a good fit for Memphis Concrète), and that's not to diminish any of his other scores, which are all great. My relationship to the movie as a whole is a little more complicated. The first time I saw it (long, long ago) I didn’t really like it and thought it was kind of stupid. I mean, I wanted to like it more. I liked that it was the Halloween movie without Michael Myers and that it confused everyone. There were things I liked about its atmosphere and its inherent strangeness, but certain plot points kind of ruined it for me. I do like it more now. There are the things I just mentioned as well as how bleak it is and it does have a pretty great ending (the very end, if by that time you forget about some of the things that had just happened shortly before). I appreciate how kind of unlikable the main character is, and not in an obvious anti-hero sort of way. I like how it has this unusual mishmash of genres, which I don’t think is even something I picked up on at first, but after repeated viewings you see mixed in with the horror things like sci-fi and the whole body-snatcher thing, a little bit of slasher, some supernatural gore, a little body horror, suspense. And it doesn’t feel like they’re forced together, it just gives the movie its own weird, unique tone. I’d still say a certain major plot point is kind of dumb and some of the writing doesn’t work very well, but now I'm at a point where I can let my perceived flaws work as an endearing charm to go along with the things that I do like so much. Did I mention how good the music is? That goes a long way too! (And hopefully we do it justice by replacing the original music with our own!) As far as horror in general, I don’t really adhere to any genre for its own sake, but given that, a lot of my favorite movies are horror movies. I think as far as genres go, horror leaves a good deal of room for absurdism and breaking with conventions and norms (both on an artistic/genre level as well as societal). I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that when it’s good it can be really good, but I don’t go out of my way to see every horror movie.
Jacques: I unabashedly love Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It’s my favorite movie in the series, in fact, even though I love the original Halloween and have time for a couple of the others. Halloween III was a basic-cable mainstay when I was a teenager in the ’90s, and that’s how I first saw it. I immediately liked it in spite of its sleazy, unlikable protagonist and some of the sillier aspects of its plot, and I couldn’t have cared less that it had nothing to do with the previous two Halloween movies. At this point, it’s like a warm bath to me, and its incredible John Carpenter/Alan Howarth score is a big part of why. It’s my favorite Carpenter/Howarth score, and one of my favorite movie scores full stop. I think the work Natalie, Robert, and I have done is in line with the original score’s atmosphere without being too close an approximation of it.
A lot of my favorite movies are horror movies or have horror aspects, but horror is a broad genre and I’m particular about which horror I like. I tend to not be too fixated on genre anyway, with one major exception: for whatever reason, I will watch literally any giallo and almost certainly enjoy it. I guess that’s horror-adjacent!
Natalie: Truthfully, this is the first time I’ve seen Halloween III! I know that as a synth player that's probably some kind of sacrilege to admit. The movie is definitely of its time in that it’s fun and cheesy and critically a complete mess! I do absolutely love a John Carpenter soundtrack though and this one is incredible. That’s my main entry point into horror — their soundtracks - and visually I looove some 80s horror where almost all of the special effects aren’t made by computers. It’s cool to see the hand of the people making the film, which is very evident through Halloween III. That’s something that I think will be really interesting to witness in the live score too — you’ll see a lot of evidence of the artists at work in real time, which is always fun and will definitely lead to a one-of-a-kind performance and viewing experience.
Thank you all so much for giving insight to your practice, process, and inspiration. We cannot wait to host you for this incredible event!
In advance of the upcoming screening of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, live score composers Natalie Hoffmann, Robert Traxler, and Jaques Granger spoke with Crosstown Arts’ registrar Jesse Butcher about experimental music, horror films, and the DIY ethos.
We are beyond excited to speak with three notable stalwarts of the Memphis experimental music scene. Between your previous collaborative and individual projects, as of this writing, the three of you have released an astounding number of recordings. This undeniable passion and drive exemplified by your contribution to experimental music is amazing. What were your initial forays into this genre and the DIY lifestyle?
Robert: I'll break this one up into my initial forays as a listener and my initial forays as a performer. The earliest beginnings of my interest in experimental music started when I got into Sonic Youth back in high school. They completely changed the way I thought about music and it's where I began appreciating the musicality of non-“musical” sounds. That set off a chain reaction as I tried to go deeper and deeper into more experimental music over the years. An early foray into the type of experimental electronic music that I sort of see as the aesthetic heart of Memphis Concrète was getting a compilation of music from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (which, granted, is about the furthest thing from DIY in the institutional sense, but given that technology has changed so much in the past 65 years, that level of experimentalism can be adapted to a DIY ethos that wasn’t available then). That’s probably not the first real experimental early electronic music I got into, but it did leave a big impression on me fairly early on and really started my historical interest in early electronic music and musique concrète and trying to connect the thread to the kinds of music people are making now, and to see how many people here in Memphis or nearby are taking similar or adjacent approaches. Also, as an aside, I never would have dreamed I’d be able to have any sort of connection with a piece of music composed in 1964 (mostly) on the RCA Mark II synthesizer in the Columbia-Princeton center, so it’s pretty amazing to me to putting on a performance of Milton Babbitt’s “Philomel”. It was a revelation to realize that some (albeit not the majority) of this electronics-and-tape music was composed with a score for live instrumental (or vocal in this case) performance. So being able to feature Milton Babbitt’s and Olly Wilson’s music alongside friends and local musicians is really astounding to me.
Though I’ve been playing music for decades, it had mostly been in bands with a more-or-less rock-ish approach (though always DIY, I guess that mindset has always been there for me). I’ve always liked taking punk or post-punk music and pushing it into more experimental territory, but it wasn’t until I started putting on the first Memphis Concrète in 2017 that I actually approached making purely abstract, experimental music in earnest (not counting playing around at home some, but not doing much with it). So my entire solo project is exactly contemporaneous with Memphis Concrète.
Jacques: Robert and I have been playing in a guitar/bass/synth/drums post-punk band called The Family Ghost since 2001, and there’s been an experimental bent to that band’s work from the beginning that’s gotten more pronounced the longer we’ve gone on.
I started playing instrumental electronic music under the name Revenge Body in 2017, and I suppose I’d characterize some of that work as experimental as well. At times, it’s more abstract, repetitive, and abrasive than the work we do in the band, and my live sets typically include stretches of improvisation that can tend toward the chaotic.
I say all this with the caveat that I always have a hard time defining what is and isn’t “experimental” since something that seems out-there for one person might be utterly workaday for another.
I’ve been playing music since the mid ’90s, and all of my musical undertakings have been DIY. I’ve just never considered any other way of doing things and have probably never had any other option anyway. The members of The Family Ghost collectively engineer our own records, design their sleeves, and self-release them because we want total control of those processes, for example, and I’ve recorded most of my Revenge Body work myself, save for a couple of short-film scores.
Natalie: Thank you! I’m so flattered that I was asked to contribute my sounds to the live score! I got into DIY when I came across a zine on a table in a coffeeshop in my hometown, which led me to a venue having independent art and music shows. I’m forever indebted to that little zine with a screen printed wallpaper cover. I started playing in bands and pursuing artwork more seriously after that. I ended up in Memphis to study photography at Memphis College of Art and from there I met people playing music, ended up in punk bands, going on tour, and recording. I’ve played in Ex-Cult, Nots, and now I’m in Optic Sink. Optic Sink has been a great/challenging experience because I’ve been learning more about synth, electronic and experimental music. Though I’d say at my core I’m just always trying my best to write a catchy song.
In the composition of your upcoming live score, I’m interested in how you have been preparing as a trio. As professional musicians you have participated in collaborations in a variety of applications. How has the development of the score been as you navigate your personal musical inclinations?
Robert: We started by breaking the movie into thirds with each of us taking charge of one section. Then we’ve come together as a group, following the others’ lead for their respective sections. We also separated out the opening and closing credits and wrote the music for that as a sort of group/band effort. I think our personal inclinations come through in pretty obvious ways given how we each lead our own section. I also think splitting it up into smaller sections gave each of us a chance to work on more granular details than if we’d been looking at the entire movie at once. I’ve done a couple of live scores before, but they were improvised. Some things were worked out (just like there is still some improvisation in this live score), but the ratio was more flipped. I’m quite proud of all the work the three of us have put into making this sound really good. Also, it’s interesting to see what similarities we have running through our sections that weren’t planned out. We all kept a certain fidelity to the spirit of the original music (without repeating or rehashing it), while mixing our own style or vision with it.
Jacques: We opted to split the movie into thirds, with each of us taking the lead on a section of their choosing while the other two work within the structure established by the “lead” player. This working method has let us write in a more focused way than we otherwise would have been able to, to act in both lead and accompanist roles, and to let each of our styles show through to a degree. We wrote music for the opening and closing credits together in the room as a three-piece band. I can’t overstate how happy I am with this score, and how elated I am to be working with Natalie and Robert.
I’ve only ever written and performed one other live score, and that was to John Hough’s The Legend of Hell House in collaboration with my friend aster at Memphis Concrète 2018. We just got together in a room a couple of times and wrote to the movie while leaving lots of space for improvisation. It was a lot of fun, but it was a markedly different approach to the one this ensemble has taken with Halloween III.
Natalie: My only experiences soundtracking so far have been to do a live score with Optic Sink to Maya Deren’s films, which was such an honor and was so much fun. We exclusively collaborated on that one, we treated it like Optic Sink writing an album.
This one has been different and really cool with each of us taking a third of the movie and then collaborating. And this film has dialogue, so it’s more of a traditional approach to scoring for me since there isn’t music going over every second of the film, as it was with Maya Deren’s silent experimental films. It’s been so interesting hearing what everyone has come up with and adding small collaborative touches to each person’s section. And we came up with some stuff together for the opening and closing credits, so those have their own special collaborative flavor. It’s been a wonderful experience working with Jacques and Robert, they’re both wildly talented musicians.
In varying capacities, you are all involved with Memphis Concréte, a prominent event for international, national, and local experimental musicians. This festival chronicles one of the most vital aspects of this genre being the live performance. How have you acclimated from the manipulations allowed in home/studio recording to the tides of interpretation and potential improvisation of a live performance?
Robert: From the outset, I’ve tried to set up my live performances in a way that approximates the sort of collage work I’d want to do in the studio. I typically use my modular system for my live performances, which I set up in such a way as to accommodate as disparate a mixture of sounds as possible. It doesn't make it 100% of the way to what I’d be able to do in the studio without having to worry about the same time constraints, but it approaches it to some degree. And I think in turn the way I set up my patches for live performances influences the way I set things up for studio recording (although I don’t do nearly so much of that anyway).
And as an aside, I appreciate your remark on live performance being one of the most vital aspects of the genre. I feel pretty strongly about that as well. I mean, I wouldn’t put studio recording or live performance above or below the other in importance, but live performance is very essential in and of itself. When I put together Memphis Concrète as a virtual festival in 2021, I went through great pains to ensure that all of the performers would be able to stream live (and not just live stream a pre-recorded video). There were a lot of live-streamed shows during lockdown that were mostly different artists that had sent in pre-recorded performances, and I understand why as there really isn’t a good infrastructure for being able to have multiple streams into the same channel. It just felt important to me to be able to continue the spirit of actual live performance. I don’t even know if I can articulate why, but maybe I don’t need to. I’m glad to have done it.
Jacques: There’s essentially no difference between my studio and live setups—when I play shows, I just bring the equipment I need to play the set I’ve planned—so live performance doesn’t compromise what I’m doing in any meaningful way. I also always make it a point to bring equipment that facilitates unexpected sounds and improvisation, including an AM/FM radio and certain effects boxes, so that there’s an exploratory element to my live sets even when I’m mainly playing more structured material. My recorded work is “just so” even when it doesn’t necessarily sound that way, and I like for my live sets to be more extemporaneous than that.
And I couldn’t agree more with your comment about the vitality of live performance in experimental/electronic music. I feel that way about music in general, as corny as that might sound. There’s little I love more than playing shows and seeing shows. It brings me real joy.
Natalie: I 100% agree — there’s little I love more than playing music. Live performances are so special to me. I feel like they have an irreplaceable verve to them for both performer and audience. My Halloween III setup is essentially the same as my live setup for Optic Sink, I just took away guitar and vocals and added a synth and some found sounds. Me playing live on stage is pretty much the same as me playing in my studio at home. I usually just play all of the parts I’m going to play and learn the dance between my parts, and then bring that to the live performance / collaboration at practice.
And, I love that Memphis Concréte brings in experimental musicians and highlights people pushing the boundaries here! It’s an honor to be asked to participate.
You will be accompanying a presentation of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. I’m curious as to your collective interest and relationship to not only this film but the horror genre as well?
Robert: The crux of my interest and relationship to the movie (and why it was chosen to be part of the festival) is the original score. It’s easily my favorite musical work of John Carpenter’s (and I'd say his most abstract and experimental, which makes it feel a good fit for Memphis Concrète), and that's not to diminish any of his other scores, which are all great. My relationship to the movie as a whole is a little more complicated. The first time I saw it (long, long ago) I didn’t really like it and thought it was kind of stupid. I mean, I wanted to like it more. I liked that it was the Halloween movie without Michael Myers and that it confused everyone. There were things I liked about its atmosphere and its inherent strangeness, but certain plot points kind of ruined it for me. I do like it more now. There are the things I just mentioned as well as how bleak it is and it does have a pretty great ending (the very end, if by that time you forget about some of the things that had just happened shortly before). I appreciate how kind of unlikable the main character is, and not in an obvious anti-hero sort of way. I like how it has this unusual mishmash of genres, which I don’t think is even something I picked up on at first, but after repeated viewings you see mixed in with the horror things like sci-fi and the whole body-snatcher thing, a little bit of slasher, some supernatural gore, a little body horror, suspense. And it doesn’t feel like they’re forced together, it just gives the movie its own weird, unique tone. I’d still say a certain major plot point is kind of dumb and some of the writing doesn’t work very well, but now I'm at a point where I can let my perceived flaws work as an endearing charm to go along with the things that I do like so much. Did I mention how good the music is? That goes a long way too! (And hopefully we do it justice by replacing the original music with our own!) As far as horror in general, I don’t really adhere to any genre for its own sake, but given that, a lot of my favorite movies are horror movies. I think as far as genres go, horror leaves a good deal of room for absurdism and breaking with conventions and norms (both on an artistic/genre level as well as societal). I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that when it’s good it can be really good, but I don’t go out of my way to see every horror movie.
Jacques: I unabashedly love Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It’s my favorite movie in the series, in fact, even though I love the original Halloween and have time for a couple of the others. Halloween III was a basic-cable mainstay when I was a teenager in the ’90s, and that’s how I first saw it. I immediately liked it in spite of its sleazy, unlikable protagonist and some of the sillier aspects of its plot, and I couldn’t have cared less that it had nothing to do with the previous two Halloween movies. At this point, it’s like a warm bath to me, and its incredible John Carpenter/Alan Howarth score is a big part of why. It’s my favorite Carpenter/Howarth score, and one of my favorite movie scores full stop. I think the work Natalie, Robert, and I have done is in line with the original score’s atmosphere without being too close an approximation of it.
A lot of my favorite movies are horror movies or have horror aspects, but horror is a broad genre and I’m particular about which horror I like. I tend to not be too fixated on genre anyway, with one major exception: for whatever reason, I will watch literally any giallo and almost certainly enjoy it. I guess that’s horror-adjacent!
Natalie: Truthfully, this is the first time I’ve seen Halloween III! I know that as a synth player that's probably some kind of sacrilege to admit. The movie is definitely of its time in that it’s fun and cheesy and critically a complete mess! I do absolutely love a John Carpenter soundtrack though and this one is incredible. That’s my main entry point into horror — their soundtracks - and visually I looove some 80s horror where almost all of the special effects aren’t made by computers. It’s cool to see the hand of the people making the film, which is very evident through Halloween III. That’s something that I think will be really interesting to witness in the live score too — you’ll see a lot of evidence of the artists at work in real time, which is always fun and will definitely lead to a one-of-a-kind performance and viewing experience.
Thank you all so much for giving insight to your practice, process, and inspiration. We cannot wait to host you for this incredible event!