 |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Fluorescent 1
Sound & Music
The music for the Fluorescent song was done after a lyric sheet had been written. The lyrics took about 15 minutes to write and were intially done in mid 1998. The music was composed later that same year, but no vocals were recorded. The music was configured from a series of discrete samples from 70s music. An attempt was made to not process or distort these fragments as Philip Brophy had previously done in a number of soundscape-oriented projects, but instead to assemble them in a quasi-analogue multi-track mode so as to retain the peculiar 'fat' sound typical of mid-70s pop-rock production. Fragments were assembled from tracks by The Rubettes, Lou Reed, The Ramones and lesser known BBC Radio one-hit wonders. Additional keyboards, bass and efffects were blended in with these pop-rock fragments. The approach was envisaged as if one was applying make-up to a sonic corpus in the spirit of Glam.
Once the Art Gallery of New South Wales commission came into effect toward the end of 2003, the lyrics were then recorded by Philip Brophy. Multiple mic placements and variated singing techniques were incorporated again in keeping with the quasi-analogue multi-track mode of record production. Influences here range from Sweet to Queen to David Bowie - all of whom employed mock-operatic bi-drag vocalizations before it became the terrain of Hollywoodesque heavy metal.
The music and vocals were then mixed in an appropriately unnaturalistic and spatially sensational 5.1 configuration. It was at this stage that the idea to split the video clip into 2 halves arose. The first half is a complete mix of the music and vocals. The second half is an identical repeat of the video but synched to an accapella version of the song, so that there are extended passages of dead silence while the video performance continues. The vocals then erupt as soon as the onscreen performer's lips open, surrounding the listener with multiple harmonized vocals in 5.1 spatialization.
I'm an uptight, crosstown, metal monkey doing brown
Thinking loud, dressing swell; hunting down some caramel
Wannabe something cool - 50 million kilojoules
Bargain basement - I'm for rent at 10%
Fuck a dog, kill a cat; turn my T-shirt inside-out
Tell mum where it's at; watching TV, getting fat
Got an itch up in my arse; gotta run I'm late for class
Bubble gum came and went; radio ain't worth a cent
Call me - flourescent
I'm a space-whoring, satin kid; mufflers running strong and big
Tripping bad, rocking sweet, tonguing anything on heat
Best band in the world - twenty boys and twenty girls
Rock'n Roll is heaven-sent; Gary Glitter's innocent
Jennifer Jason Leigh - just the girl I'd like to be
Sell my records, crash a car; forty dollars - I'm a star
Put a mirror on the floor; lots of blood, lots of gore
Generation excellent; kiss my lips - I'm peppermint
Call me - flourescent
I'm a punk rock superguy; cut my hair before I die
Gonna surf the internet - ejaculate until I'm spent
Love to ride Dana Scully - take some photos - make some money
Disco is magnificent; Barry White for president
Electric boogaloo; zapping everything I do
Ping Pong - Donkey Kong; in my brian there's nothing wrong
Make some sound - make some noise; smashing everybody's toys
Last will and testament: what I said is what I meant
Call me - flourescent
Call me - flourescent
More >image+video
Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy