SITE is a collaborative conceptual series curated by Driftworks and Audiobulb Records, exploring the relationship between sound and place. Each edition invites artists to recreate their personal perception of a location, blending environmental sounds and imagery to capture the unique ‘audio-geography’ of our world.
Akira Film Script is Ryan Watts whose SITE is his childhood home in Fremont (USA).
Over Exposure is an album about home - my childhood home, more specifically; in comfort, and in quiet reflections on the past, present, and future.
As I've gotten older, nostalgia hits hard, with greater frequency. As I meditate on my past, in hopes to inform my future, I've found myself returning to my childhood home and neighborhood in these reflective sessions.
One thing I adored about where I grew up was how insulated it was from the chaos and noise of the outside world. I lived at the end of a street with a large field behind our house (filled with new homes now; sadly the field is lost to time), and during the days, everyone went to work - it was a classic middle-class American neighborhood in its heyday - and as such, the days would just be so...quiet. You'd hear prop planes flying over, leaving the air field across the bay; you'd hear birds, the occasional car, the clock chiming every hour, on the hour...outside of all that, there wasn't much else going on.
1. N2-16
2. N3-71
3. N5-59
4. N8-99
5. N4-81
6. N1-82
7. N6-79
8. N9-40
I still find comfort in the warm embrace and the soft silence of my childhood home; sometimes to escape the chaos of my home I go to my parent's house when I know they're out and about, or on vacation, to absorb some real nostalgic peace and quiet.
For this album I wanted to write, record, and capture field recordings in and around my childhood home on a sunny, quiet, warm mid-day. I recorded in each room of the house, the garage, the backyard - fully documented the quiet spaces of the home with the occasional prop plane propellers, soft bird songs, clock chimes, wind gusts,
or neighbors walking by.
Adding to the nostalgia, I intentionally recorded these compositions to cassette to get the warm hiss and artifacts that come along with that medium built into the works themselves. I grew up listening to cassettes in my childhood home, so this all seemed the appropriate route to take considering the concept of the album.
Written, recorded, mixed, and detailed on the OP-1 field, tracks were then recorded direct to tape via the Yamaha KX-W392 Dolby B/C dual cassette deck. The cassette audio and project's field recordings were all captured on the Zoom H5 handheld recorder, then assembled in the DAW with no edits - I wanted every quiet artifact, pop, hiss, abrupt start, and stop.
One final note on the album: traditional song titles were forwent, adding to the impressionistic nature of the project. While these are the reflections of quiet moments from my childhood home, I hope for them to foster quiet moments in other people's homes today.
Akira Film Script is the ongoing multi-genre output from musician and composer Ryan Watts. With a history steeped in all forms of electronic music going back 30+ years, and a rich host of inspiring literature, both fiction and non-fiction, alongside generations of film inputs, his output continues to seek transcendence from the mundane day-to-day doldrums, and instead focus in on the more beautiful, rewarding, and inspiring moments in an increasingly loud and raucous world. Meditation, reflection, our place in the greater cosmos, and self-care/healing are all themes explored through Ryan's more recent ambient-focused output.
Akira Film Script releases can be found on Whitelabrecs, Driftworks, Evergreen Music, Audiobulb, ROHS!, zakè drone, SeeHear Recordings, Off Record Label, Shimmering Moods, SoundGhost, Mabui Music, reset networks, Machine Tribe Recordings, D-Trash Records, and his own imprint, Green Chair Music.
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