I mainly used my Alto mixer by itself and with a digital delay/pitch shifter micro effect rack; Fuzz factory, bass clone, Wah, poly octave and two cheap mini reverb pedals. No input is essentially when you patch an output of a mixer or anything really back into its own input. This creates a feedback loop which can lead to all sorts of noise and oscillations when you turn and fiddle with the knobs. It is pioneered by Japanese sound artist Toshimaru Nakamura (perhaps I am more infulenced by Japanese artists than I realise). I find no input to be a process of improvisation and discovery – not knowing exactly what will happen whilst also trying to anticipate and adapt to what is happening.
However, having already experimented with this technique for some months now and not recorded much with it, my choice of film (stumbling upon it on youtube having gone down an experimental film rabbit hole) proved perfect to be its visual companion both frantic almost chaotic in nature.
I was at first attracted to the beating and flashing aspect of the film so gravitated to those sorts of sounds on the mixer. Aiming for glitchy, repetitive squeals, chirps and thumps. However I still tried to get variety of sounds: fast & slow, frequencies high and low, held/prolonged or pulsing/bubbing, crackle and pops or aggressive drones etc. Whilst doing these prolonged improvisations (20 mins or so each) I had the film playing and repeating for a vaugue sense of synchresis. This wasnt an accurate foley attempt though more loose interpretation. For example for the curling ribbons of light I tried to create some high pitched squeals and screams which I hope to sample and pan. As just mentioned I will go on to cut these recordings in reaper finding small sections of the improvisations that I liked to match the films visuals.
Shiroyasu Suzuki says of Ito’s film: ‘we can call it a kind of film-as-game.’ I think no input can be quite game-like, one of tactile discovery.
