Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

photo: Michael Shaw

Melanie Chilianis, a Melbourne flautist, has sallied forth in recent times with a successful union between the instrument she made her name with, the flute, and technological mixes, patches and crunchy electronic treatments.

Melanie has an honours degree in music performance from Monash University and shares a close working relationship with notable Australian composers including Paul Moulatlet, Thomas Reiner and Steve Adam. She features as a soloist on Melbourne outfit re-sound’s eponymous first CD and as part of the ensemble on their second release IN C, an interpretation of a Terry Riley work. Several of her live performances have been broadcast on ABC Classic FM. As an improviser, Melanie has had airplay on Radio National, Triple J FM, RTR-FM (Perth) and 3PBS (Melbourne).
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What’s the inspiration behind your latest work?

I wanted to make some small, self-contained sound pieces that would stand alone for the listener – as brief encounters. Two of the tracks were made as part of the soundtrack to a NeoPoetry video piece. I also wanted to use a limited number of samples that would be quite recognisable as “instrument” or “voice” – kind of a game with myself, to see how I could work within the constraints I had set (three or four short flute samples, not too much space-age processing, and so on).

Tell me about the method used to create them, in terms of technology, philosophy and so on.

I’m using breath and the sound of the flute at many structural levels. In this way I can get into and pull apart the cycle of breath and flute sound. I recorded the flute and vocal sounds through the internal mic in my Powerbook because I didn’t have any other means to record samples into the computer at that time. The sound quality was pretty crap, but I thought, oh well, I’ll have to work with that. You can’t hold back because you don’t have the best system. The sequencer I use is Logic Audio. For these pieces, the creative focus was in the relationship of sound gestures to one another and the juxtaposition of events that have the potential to create an impression in the listener’s aural and psychological space. I use whatever technological methods I can to achieve this, and I keep it simple.

Forgive me for saying this…I’ve known you for some time, but until you opened my ears I associated the flute with prog-rock band Jethro Tull and their ridiculous flautist/lead singer Ian Anderson. To me, Tull were a particularly insipid example of Dinosaur Rock, and Anderson was some kind of buffoon, and so that association undervalued it in my mind. Do you fight that prejudice a lot, or I am just particularly dim and/or ignorant?

Ha! Well I think I myself have undervalued the creative potential of the flute at various times in my musicial life, because it does have those horrible connotations: Jethro Tull, James Galway. It’s the first thing people think of, them or Jane Rutter who posed nude under a sheet on her album cover. And at uni, it was always the most prissy, boring people who played the flute. So I made it my business to play it in the most crazy and aggressive way I could. Now, I am getting back into its naturally resonant sound, and quite unapologetically, too. Actually, I heard a Jethro tull track on the radio the other day and the flute went OFF!

I know it does! I’m ashamed to admit I was such a musical snob, because I watched the video of the Isle of Wight Festival the other day, and not only did Tull kick righteous ass, but Ian Anderson was oh-so-funky in his yellow tights, playing some wicked flute. He had a lot of charisma.

Well …….

What’s next for you?

I’ve completed an electroacoustic work called “breath stain”, which uses samples recorded in rehearsal with the group re-sound (flute, bass clarinet, clarinet, saxophones and violin). This will be on the next re-sound CD. Currently, I’m in Japan teaching English for year and I’ll continue with the sound design there. I also hope to start a band in Japan and play punk-arse guitar.

“Punk-arse”?

Yes, punk-arse.

Picture your private musical utopia: in that ideal space, music should evoke…what?

Golden lands dripping with juicy jubes and diamante fruits; hedge mazes; a bouncy, gelatinous landscape. Well, music can also evoke nothing but a pinprick of light on a dark horizon. In reality, music is usually hitched to another (mostly visual) medium and is central to most people’s identity and sense of place. I think a piece of music or sound design is completed by the listener, as they bring aural, physical, imaginary or psychological associations to the sounds, thus forming the final picture, perhaps unique to each person.

Speaking of visuals, these pieces remind me somewhat of Ennio Morricone’s scores for Dario Argento’s early “gallo” films. What say you?

I guess they do a bit. I didn’t start out thinking that I was going to make some short thriller sound design, though. It’s interesting that when music doesn’t have a pulse or a traditional harmonic framework, we tend to associate it with film soundtrack for lack of other reference points. Having said that, I think the popular medium of film is responisible for the dissemination of non-traditional sound design to a wider audience, which is great – if only they were aware of it as the film progresses. Film soundtrack (the music-ey/orchestral part) also reinforces various traditional musical conventions and links them with particular expectations, for example swelling violins under scenes of romance or reunion, or harmonic dissonance to build tension in a scary bit. I would love to write the soundtrack to a big FAT psychological thriller and break some of those expectations!

– Simon Sellars

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Re-sound