marcus fjellström

Whilst searching for songs to post from his new album Library Music 1 (and failing, miserably) I came across this gem, a audio-visual piece that Fjellström did. It's a rather interesting concept, info on which you can find below the video.

Commissioned for the Unsound Festival 2010, Lichtspiel Mutation 1 is the first part of a planned series of audiovisual music drama pieces, closely resembling the silent film performances of cinema's infancy.

The underlying idea behind the Lichtspiel Mutation series is to use old films in the 'public domain' as raw material, to be de- and reconstructed into new pieces of experimental music drama. The original film constitutes the seed of its own rebirth; themes, arch and narrative from the film are kept intact, as well as actual moving image material, but 'remixed' into a completely new form; a poetic visual/musical work that conceptually shares similarities with opera and/or ballet, but becomes something completely different altogether.

This first work in the series is based on Hugo Fregonese's 1953 film "Man in the Attic", a Jack the Ripper narrative. Lichtspiel Mutation 1 opened the Unsound Festival in Kraków, Poland in october 2010, featuring an expanded 45-piece Sinfonietta Cracovia and a guest appearance by fellow Miasmah artist Elegi (Tommy Jansen) on live electronics.

This version is based on a recording of the rehearsal session with the Sinfonietta Cracovia (conducted by Daníel Bjarnason), and is edited together with an electronic music track that slightly differs from the one used at the 2010 premiere in Kraków (the most significant difference being the omission of Elegi's live electronics).