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3OHA | Alex Epton Q+A Film Score
by Brendan Casey
In August of 1991, a coup attempt was made by members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to wrest power away from Mikhail Gorbachev. However, rather than the usual emergency tone being broadcast, people across the USSR suddenly found the classic Russian ballet “Swan Lake” seeping from their television sets. Over the course of three days, the haunting sounds of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece wafted through the homes and streets of the USSR, forever intertwining those eerie melodies with a period of chaos for a generation of Russians.
Though the coup attempt was not an immediate success, most historians agree it was the beginning of the end. By the time the Iron Curtain was fully lowered, the western world and all of its cultural accoutrements became the go-to indulgence for a generation of young Russians eager to embrace the priorly forbidden fruit. Filmmaker Clayton Vomero has assembled a new documentary, “ЗOHA” (or “Zona”), about the feelings of opportunity felt by a generation of Russians that were quickly squashed by the harsh realities of Western capitalistic consumerism. As Vomero explains, “3OHA’s overarching narrative theme is based in Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation. The film explores this as a critique of consumer culture and how that culture weaves with our memories of historical events to form an apparatus of control. As these events separate from the moment in which they’ve occurred, they become memory, they merge into image, product, and iconography to form simulacra – or: empty symbols that no longer contain their original meaning but are now full of emotion."
Composer Alex Epton—who has also worked with Thom Yorke, Bjork, David Byrne, Arca, and FKA Twigs among many others—is a frequent collaborator of Vomero’s. He was tapped to compose a score to reflect this period of fractured uncertainty. Touching on abstract IDM, contemporary classical, vaporous ambience and heavy percussion, the score is also anchored to old world sounds by cellist Lucinda Chua. Making expert use of snippets of the “Swan Lake” main theme as well as neon-lit sounds from the budding electronic and dance scenes, Epton weaves a soundscape that encapsulates the vague feeling of a new era about to dawn. Flaunt talked with Epton about his score itself being a simulacra, the beauty of decay, and the complications of cultural exchange.
Had you gotten to spend any time in Russia at all prior to composing the score?
I hadn’t and still haven’t been but I had heard little anecdotes from friends who had been there on tour and of course was very curious. Growing up in America in the middle of the Cold War we were told so many ridiculous propagandistic things about Russia that it’s natural to want to find out more of the truth of the situation.
The title "Zona" is a clear reference to Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, and the clips I saw in the trailer were certainly reminiscent of the bleak Zone from that film, a nice (or somewhat disturbing) bit of life imitates art. I thought this to be an interesting coincidence with a film so concentrated on the idea of simulacra and new forms that are devoid of the meaning of the original. For instance, the importance of Swan Lake in the score seems to less represent the magnitude of that piece as a touchstone in the Russian Classical Canon and to focus instead on the new meaning of it as the song played during the ‘91 Coup Attempt. The term ‘simulacra’ seems to have an inherently negative quality to it but do you think that imbuing things with new meaning or stripping them of some prior meanings is inherently a bad thing? Or just a natural mutation of art?
Exactly, I don’t feel that’s it’s necessarily negative. In the context of art, it’s not that the simulacra is somehow hollow or less meaningful, it more describes the way things mutate through inspiration and imitation. In the context of the film specifically, we see how youth in Russia would get little glimpses of Western culture: Images, a record, a magazine or book that’s been smuggled in and then they become inspired by those things. Since the cultures are so far removed from one another, the evolution/mutation of ideas seems to happen rapidly
The use of Swan Lake in the score works like this: You get a glimpse of the core idea, enough to recognize it, then the theme quickly takes a turn down a very different path. I’m inspired by Swan Lake but then quickly lose interest and start following my own inspiration.
Directed by Clayton Vomero
On a similar note of detached meaning from the original, your score is coming out on SA Recordings and functions nicely as a piece of music even without the accompanying film. When you’re composing, do you imagine how the music would stand up as a work appreciated on its own? Or are you just focused on being an appropriate accompaniment to the film?
Clayton (Vomero, the director) and I had done a few films together before this one and since Clayton also comes from a musical background, the music is really important to him. Usually before he even starts shooting something, we’ll have extensive conversations about the music and I’ll begin writing some pieces. In general, if we’re going to shoot people dancing or moving to music it’s cool to have the actual music, even if it’s just a draft, so that they can move to it. For this film, I think we had 30-40 mins of music written before he had started editing. Once an edit is done, usually there are a few holes that need to be filled in so I’ll write ‘to picture’ for that stuff but, in general, a lot of the music is done beforehand based on our preliminary conversations.
Do you find that your score reveals itself to you, the creator, even more after you hear it removed from the context of the film? As just a standalone piece of music?
A few of the key pieces really only appear in the film for maybe 10-15 seconds. Those were expanded to something closer to their original lengths for the album. Also, a bunch of important pieces from the film were left off the soundtrack album because when we started playing around with the sequence, they were interrupting the experience too much. So in this way, the album very much exists as its own entity.
The music itself is quite murky, you used the phrase a “degraded photocopy feel” and said you wanted something elusive, like being in a fog. However, a score is a written-out and arranged specific piece. Was it a challenge to pinpoint or expertly nail down a sound or feeling of vagueness?
I recorded everything as I went, so nothing was written down per se. The sound is baked in from the beginning. In the case of Lucinda’s strings, for some parts I would write out parts and then she recorded them and then I would manipulate the sound of the strings. For other parts, she would send her own ideas and I would just manipulate those sounds. The most challenging part was not the sound but the actual content, searching for harmonic devices that felt Russian enough without feeling outdated.
In terms of the “degraded photocopy feel”, do you feel like entropy has a natural beauty in it? Works like the Disintegration Loops find the beauty in decay but do you think the beauty is genuine or do think finding the silver lining in collapse is almost a defense mechanism against the inevitable?
I love the Disintegration’s Loops! I think the beauty in it is 100 percent genuine although that may be simultaneously related to your second point of impermanence. It’s also cool when the whole picture or piece isn’t just degraded. You have to think like a set designer, where you’re making a scene appear lived in, scuffed, aged to just the right degree where it’s convincing and then into the murk you sprinkle just one or two futuristic, purely digital sparkly bits in there and then that contrast is super potent.
Film Still, 3OHA, directed by Clayton Vomero
I’ve read that Clayton Vomero called the film ‘a dialogue between the West and the East,’ but it seems that there’s a bit of an imbalance with the US side dominating a recently weakened East. There is a lot of discussion this decade of the idea of cultural appropriation and cultural dominance. How do you think one can trade cultural ideas without having the more dominant countries squash the cultural identities of smaller countries?
In the film, or at least in the first half that explores the culture in the ‘90s, I wouldn’t say the West was dominant over culture in Russia because access to Western ideas was so limited. Now for sure though we’re entering into a new age and culture is becoming more homogenized because of our access to information. It’s hard to predict what’s to come. I feel like we’re just beginning to see the very first of this change.
The film premiered with a live score on Nov 6th. You’ll also have several of the other artists including Eartheater performing remixes. Did the idea of so many remixes of your score seem relevant for the subject matter? Making simulacra of your original music, which in turn was making new meaning from some other pieces and genres?
I’ve always been involved in making dance music so remixing has been a super important part of my early career and I love having things remixed when possible. It’s such a unique outlet for musical creativity: take everything you don’t like and throw it away, then build a new structure around the remaining bits! It’s really the most fun ever, kind of like a musical sudoku puzzle or something. The Eartheater remix turned out so amazing! She really went above and beyond with it. I highly recommend listening to that one!
Do you have any particular favorite Russian composers or bands?
Definitely Shostakovich. We needed to use Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in the film, since that’s the music they played on all the TV stations during the coup of ’91, so we have this little interpolation of it that reoccurs almost like a rhythm throughout the film, almost like a seismic wave cresting or something, or at least we used the first six notes of Swan Lake so it hooks you to know that’s what it is. But after that first statement, I went full Shostakovich with it. He’s my favorite for sure. I discovered his music through jazz, weirdly. I’ve been a jazz musician since I was young and a big Keith Jarret fan. At one point, a friend randomly gave me this double CD with Keith Jarret playing Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues, which is basically Shostakovich riffing on Bach, but like, simultaneously so bombastic, heartbreaking, sophisticated, whatever you want, it’s in there. That broke me open to classical music in a big way and it’s still sort of my favorite.
Alex Epton’s 3OHA, featuring Lucinda Chua is available for purchase here.