OFFF Barcelona Main Titles 2019
Explore the process behind the sound
It was an incredible honour to work with longtime collaborator and hugely talented director Chris Bjerre on the Main Titles for the legendary OFFF Festival in Barcelona. We created a slow building meditative score that starts sparse and brooding and builds to an emotional, spine-tingling orchestral climax. A musical representation of the narrative arc, where in an alternate reality the power grid and communication sources have collapsed and a beautiful mutation of organic life unfolds.
No exaggeration, it made me cry like a baby.
Nathalie Koutia. OFFF Communications Director
Strings
An incredibly important element were the strings which give the piece a huge amount of emotion. We composed the string quartet parts in-house and then re-recorded them live at Invada Studios in Bristol. Andrew Morgan worked with us to orchestrate and conduct the music. As well as the specially composed parts we created a suite of experimental string sounds to use as builds and transitions throughout the piece. These include ricochets and group portamentos.
Double Bass
The final section of the composition uses a double bass part to add weight, warmth and increased significance to the melody line. This was recorded on an acoustic upright with a range of mics, plus a pass with our Barcus Berry contact mic and finally on a stick bass. A combination of all three passes were used in the final mix. Big thanks to session musician Ole Rudd for his double bass playing skills.
Modular & Sound Design
Tom and Owen were lucky to be able to record a lot of sounds with an amazing modular rig thanks to our friends at Elevator Sound in Bristol, with the help of their in-house modular guru Benjamin Chilton. Drones, electrical and metallic textures and low-end hits were all created from these sessions. Plucked impacts can also be heard using a real spring reverb. We also created a set of impacts and low-frequency modulations with some of our synths such as the Novation Bass Station 2 and Korg Minologue.
EBow
There are a number of distorted elements throughout the piece that represent the broken infrastructure and dysfunctional electricity. We recorded guitar and lap harp strings using an EBow. An EBow is a small device that you play with a stringed instrument which creates a feedback circuit to induce forced string vibrations. The results are perpetual drone sounds and harmonic distortions. We mutated these further using guitar pedals such as the Particle Panda and our favourite old school effects rack the Eventide H3000 SE.
Vocals
The choir that swells and builds to an emotional crescendo towards the end was all recorded by Echoic’s own composer and vocalist Kambiz Aghdam. A simple combination of multi-tracking and harmonising was used alongside reverbs such as the Black Hole and Michael Norris Freeze. Recordings were not heavily edited leaving breaths and unwanted vocalisations in. We liked the sound of these generally and felt it added a human character to the project.
