Capturing what it’s like to scroll endlessly while waiting for the nukes to drop, electronic musician Sheet Noise has delivered his own modern take on the atomic anxiety record.
The DJ and curator’s debut album, Shostakovich’s 5th Played Backwards in a Concrete Silo, is an eviscerating collage of ambient, jungle, and noise. Now, he’s teamed up with the British artist Mark Leckey, whose dark, eerie video for the track “Iron Lung Ballet” features robed figures crossing a desolate dreamscape and a little girl covered in snow—or is it nuclear ash?
Ideas of sampling and remixing have long lived at the heart of Leckey’s work, including his use of cut-up night-club footage in 1999’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore. He’s also made some pretty interesting music of his own, so the collaboration feels like a logical fit.
WATCH BELOW: Sheet Noise – “Iron Lung Ballet” [Directed by Mark Leckey]
“I’ve been a fan of Mark’s work since I first saw Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore back in the day, which was made out of found footage he repurposed and told a story with,” Sheet Noise said. “It has a real hauntological feel to me, and my record has an air of hauntology to it—especially this track—so he came to mind immediately.
“We’ve followed each other on Instagram for several years now and would occasionally shoot the odd comment back and forth or talk about music. During one such conversation Mark asked if I’d like to do a guest mix on his NTS show, so I cheekily asked if he’d make me a clip for one of the LP’s tracks as a trade and, surprisingly and much to my glee, he agreed!”
You know you’re in for a bracing ride when a record comes with an instruction to “just strap yourself into the electric chair and get ready for the end,” so it’s probably no surprise that it has caught people’s attention. The other day, Sheet Metal’s song “Berlin” was used for Fendi’s runway show at Milan Fashion Week, while Japanese video-game auteur Hideo Kojima recently shared that he’d been listening to the record’s opening track, “Reactor IV.”
Hideo presumably related to the album’s heavy End Times vibe, as his Metal Gear Solid series—depicting a world where the entire global economy is dependent on neverending warfare—is feeling more prophetic with each passing day. “I titled the record Shostakovich’s 5th Played Backwards in a Concrete Silo because it symbolized a kind of desperation in a post-nuclear world,” he explained, “the kind you see in the film Threads’ nuclear winter scene.
“Shostakovich’s Fifth is a masterpiece that brings to mind survival, sorrow, and resistance, so I thought it interesting to put those ideas in the context of it being performed in a bleak place like a silo or a bunker—very warped but still managing to come across defiantly.”
Until recently, Sheet Noise has been best known as a curator, serving up photographs from fashion, art, literature, music, and film for his 200,000 followers on Instagram. He’s also worked with Enfants Riches Déprimés creative director Henri Alexander Levy, sourcing records and books for the Anti Public Library, a shop and bar on Rue Charlot in Paris.
With the month dominated by end-of-year lists and Spotify Wrapped, the album went a little under the radar when it was released in December by Ron Morelli’s New York label L.I.E.S. Records. The album features a distorted photograph of Isabelle Adjani from the harrowing 1981 film Possession. “The scene, and the frame I chose in particular, perfectly encapsulated the despair, violence, and release I wanted to put across with the record,” he said. “I was thinking a lot about the record in terms of a cataclysmic event, as in a nuclear detonation or war… a time of regathering and then a rebirth or some kind of light at the end of the tunnel.”
The album was recorded between London and Paris, where Sheet Noise splits his time, but for the interests of accuracy, it’s important to note that the recording process didn’t actually involve playing Shostakovich’s Fifth backwards in a concrete silo. “Perhaps in the future I will, or at least in some kind of bunker,” Sheet Noise added. “If anyone has an offer, call me.”
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