Ice, ice, Baby

So then, I was lazing around in front of the puter. There was all sorts of villainy going around on Facebook. Feeling frustrated that the second volume of my music theory textbook still hadn't arrived from the UK, I decided to post my own villainous context of this predicament. You see, I'm too cheapskate to pay for music classes, so I decided to learn everything on my own with books. With crinkled brow, I contemplated the possibly calamitous end to this solo endeavour all because a bloody book got lost in the mail.

So much for free shipping. Greed never wins. Neither did Greedo, for that matter, regardless who shot first.

Anyway, so I saw this physics video posted by French saxophonist Chris Stalk, which was really intriguing especially because it starts with the image of a tiny bear sculpture on a glass base. The narration was in French but it's all Greek to me since I'm a native Hokkien speaker prone to bursts of Huttese once in a while.

The documentary was, I was later told, about how scientists compressed water onto two diamonds, to see how crystals of various shapes were formed. And mind you, all this was captured on camera. I had no idea what the narrator was saying - he could very well be reading his wife's grocery list - but the images fascinated me endlessly. Actually the whole idea fascinated me and jiggled my warm testicles.

I took the narration sample and incorporated it - sometimes rhythmically, most times nonsensically - into this 13-minute piece (because that's approximately how long the documentary is). I melded two fascinations - one with Steve Reich's ideas of long-drawn out chords (but mine without pulses), and the other with physics. Near the last minute or so, I added a brief, pulsing horn section just for kicks (or just to piss off Reich and his fans, ahem).

So, here it is. I hope you find some meaning in this, and become so grateful that you'll let me sleep with your sister.




And here is the video that inspired it.

http://www.canal-u.tv/video/science_en_cours/cristallisation_sous_pression.11