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VIDEO: Chrome Canyon - "Memories of a
Scientist" (Dir. by Chrome Canyon & Noah Kalina) -
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Still from "Memories of a Scientist"
"The making of this video was
a definitely b-movie affair. We shot it all at my music
studio in Greenpoint - I had gone down to Leeds Radio in Williamsburg and
gotten all this weird old gear which is what we used to build the "control
room", and we completely rearranged the live room to accommodate the
"circle of synths" - there's 17 synths in total. I nearly lit
my head on fire at the end because my hair was so full of hairspray and
teased out - I was literally up on a ladder off to the side of camera lighting
a sparkler yelling "ready! action!" then I'd swing the
lit sparkler into the frame and hop in myself. I was stepping all over
smoldering embers with my bare feet, and that room must have been 120 degrees
with our little 4 person crew, a giant hazer, the smoke from the fireworks,
and all the windows and doors taped shut to block out light - it was not the
most pleasant place to be. Noah was a good sport about it though, and
the camera work he did was incredible. In the end it all worked out,
and all said and done I think the video looks amazing." -
Chrome Canyon on the making of the video for "Memories of a
Scientist"
The future never came. The year 2000 arrived, a new
millennium was born, and yet we were not greeted with hover-boards. Our computers
did not sprout legs and profess their love us. Enter Chrome Canyon. If we can
indeed recover yesterday's fantasy of what tomorrow would (should) be, then
Chrome Canyon is the temporal technician for the job. The solo project of New
York artist Morgan Z, Chrome Canyon creates analog synth-powered epics that
move between eras past and ages imagined to create the perfect score for an
alternate now.
Morgan's formative music memories were beamed in through
the living room TV set - Vangelis'Blade Runner score, Wendy
Carlos via Tron, Giorgio Moroder's work on Cat People.
He spent his youth on the outskirts of southern California's San Fernando
Valley. His folks had him on piano by 6. At 16, he moved into that same
living room and gave his bedroom over to housing his collected gear.
Somewhere between the avant-garde compositions he wrote
while studying jazz at NYC's New School, a college job selling keyboards at
Sam Ash in Times Square, and the satirical sex-funk band he founded on the
side, his destiny was taking shape.
For three years, Morgan played in the glammy electro
outfit Apes & Androids, but when that ended, he retreated to his private
Brooklyn studio where he began to amass analog synthesizers at an obsessive
rate.
Then the remixes began pouring forth. Phoenix, Passion Pit,
and a commissioned remix for Foster the People - their hits reemerging with a
healthy dusting of metallic sheen, glowing neon pink and alarm clock green.
Then came deranged disco edits of soul-jazz master George Benson and synthpop
pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, Chrome Canyon's profile growing as Morgan
further blurred past, present and future.
Now, Stones Throw is set to release Chrome Canyon's debut
album, Elemental Themes on Oct. 9. The inaugural set is
blessed with solid circuitry and an organic core: not only those analog
synths, but live drums, bass, guitar and Theremin run through hand-built
compressors, composed and arranged into a living, breathing whole. Elemental
Themes was one of the last works mastered by Nilesh Patel, the
engineer behind classic albums by the likes of Air, Bjork, and Daft Punk. The
end result is something wondrously both in and out of time, and a cinematic
experience without the cinema.
CHROME CANYON
8/23 - New York, NY Le Poisson Rouge *
* = w/ Nite Jewel & Peanut Butter Wolf  Chrome Canyon Elemental Themes (Stones Throw) Street Date: Oct. 9, 2012 Track List: 01 Beginnings 02 Pluze 03 Legends 04 Branches 05 Elemental Themes 06 Cave of Light 07 Generations 08 Chasing The Dead 09 Sacred Mountain 10 Memories of a Scientist 11 Signs from an Old World 12 Carfire on the Highway |
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