Tall Tales is a surreal hallucinatory cinematic experience with an Electronica soundtrack matched to dreamy falsetto vocals.
Thom Yorke (Radiohead) and Mark Pritchard have the sound. The album is to be released in three days.
Stunning hyper-realist Pop Art visuals come from producer Jonathan Zawanda. Born and raised in Perth, Australia, he is a graphic designer by profession and a multi-disciplinary artist.
In blending digital and analogue, he has described himself as a metamathemagical artist.
This was the title of his 2018 installation at the Sydney Opera House. As he explains, the interface between science and sensuality, rational and emotional thought. Magic and alchemy are equivalent to speed of particles. The art of the quantum physical universe.
Mark Pritchard is a UK music producer and a DJ re-mixer. He grew up listening to Two-Tone Ska, Rock and indie Pop, but gravitated towards Techno and House of the Detroit and Chicago styles.
He is adamant his music is NOT minimalist.
Which is surprising as Tall Tales reminds me of the ground-breaking Koyaanisqatsi (1982) with a soundtrack by Philip Glass. Which was an ecology and over-population movie
The movie starts in the oceans as the source of all life on this planet. Waves and tidal movements have a soothing soporific effect. White ocean noise whilst electronic music is muted in the background with voices barely noticeable.
I was reminded of the massive CGI visuals that accompanied Yorke’s recent Auckland Arena concert, when matched with his spectral falsetto vocals. In truth, the biggest overwhelming ocean visuals came with the intro to Dua Lipa’s recent show.
There is a story being told here. An animated cartoon character is set in an old school game environment and each station he encounters is a portal to different dreamworlds.
The ambience is grotesque and eerie in Surrealist fashion. Bruegel mixed with Dali and Picasso.
Images can constantly morph in the fashion of the scramblesuit as described in Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. See Richard Linklater’s movie for the visual technique.
One central sequence has a mediaeval town square as the camera pans in a continuous tracking shot. A man on all fours entwined in a table, two women battling over a large fish (symbolism alert), a boy reaching for grapes and getting tapped on his head with a hammer by his mother(probably), a buxom woman with a large amphora stuck over her head.
Music becomes more prominent as the movie progresses, especially with Yorke’s vocals coming to the fore.
Images can be hyper-real. They can also dissolve into amorphous pastels.
There is a very grainy monochrome sequence. Objects suddenly coalesce out of visual white noise. School children playing in areas of gross urban decay or bombings. Throwing rocks in their little gangs.
Not tied to any moral stance but is a stark prod towards current times in Gaza and Ukraine.
Arresting and slightly repulsive in the manner of a Cronenberg movie. Disturbing and witch-like in David Lynch fashion, especially as he dives out to the macabre in Eraserhead and Inland Empire.
Artificial Intelligence about to push through the barriers into the world of Art? One of Pritchard’s many projects is one called Harmonic 313 and an album he made. When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence.
Tall Tales is an impressive art installation piece and would be equally at home in the Auckland Art Gallery. On a massive screen. It is still in the magnificent human realm.
Rev. Orange Peel