B.A.A.D.M. 004

Opéra Mort – Film Works

  • LP
  • Edition of 300
  • 2017
  • A1.The Potted Psalm
  • B1.Dream Work
  • B2.The Potted Work

As part of the 2016 fes­ti­val Night of the Experimental Film, French duo Opéra Mort (= Èlg + Fusiller) per­formed a live sound­track for two films that cen­tre on the para­dox­i­cal sym­bio­sis of love and death: The Potted Psalm’ by Sidney Peterson and James Broughton, and Dream Work’ by Peter Tscherkassky. Both films con­vey love and death as both direct oppo­sites and kin­dred con­cepts, turn­ing to cryp­tic sur­re­al­ism, poetic hal­lu­ci­na­tions and flick­er­ing alter­na­tions between flesh and ecsta­tic abstrac­tion. Opéra Mort’s sonic accom­pa­ni­ment is a squirm­ing con­tra­dic­tion, fraught with micro-har­monic fric­tion and bleeps of elec­tronic alarm. Is the sound­scape meld­ing into a soli­tary whole or blow­ing itself apart? With Film Works’, the duo have adapted their sound­track into a stand­alone recorded work. Synthesisers flicker like com­put­ers trapped inside cal­cu­la­tive loops. Flailing organs knot into ten­drils of micro­phone feed­back. Occasionally it’s pos­si­ble to iden­tify traces of body and voice within the wretched lat­tice – rest­ing-state heart­beats, reg­u­la­tory beeps of life sup­port – which are only ever faintly present within Opéra Mort’s tran­scen­dent else­where, like echoes hum­ming through the mem­brane between the cor­po­real world and the heights of ecstasy. Just like the films that inspired it, Film Works’ enacts the strange dis­pu­ta­tion that defines the cli­mac­tic extremes of human expe­ri­ence: to love and death, the body is both the fun­da­men­tal ves­sel and the husk that is left behind.

These tracks were recorded /​composed between the 2nd and the 4th of April 2016 as exclu­sive sound­tracks for The Potted Psalm’ by James Broughton & Sidney Peterson and Dream Work’ by Peter Tscherkassky. Both were ini­tially broad­casted / played on the 15th of April 2016 at Night of The Experimental Film in Gent, Belgium. The Potted Work is an out­take from the same ses­sions. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Album design by Mathieu Serruys & Joris Verdoodt.

BAADM Opera Mort Film Works LP BAADM Opera Mort Film Works LP 2 BAADM Opera Mort Film Works LP 3 BAADM Opera Mort Film Works LP 4