Film

Film is the first solo album by Stefan Németh, member of Radian and Lokai and the co-founder of Mosz Records. The album developed out of his years of work creating soundscapes for experimental filmmakers and installation artists, but it was only after years of creating this work that he had he idea to repurpose it for an album under his own name.

Since around 2001, Stefan Németh has been working with the creators of short films and experimental videos, most intended for special film festival programs. He had long considered releasing music as a solo artist, and eventually Németh realized that the music he was making for those films was just what he wanted to be making as a solo musician, but just putting the music on a CD would not have been the proper way to do it. When these pieces were created, Németh was working on a variety of projects, each of them with its own life and intent, always with the music being created to serve the movie, as opposed to creating a single album where his process could have been more linear. His idea for Film was to take this material and re-structure and develop these soundtracks into autonomous pieces of music, while keeping the cinematic spirit alive.

The consequence of his method is a range of evolutionary levels between the different tracks, between some that are very similar to the versions used in the various film projects, to those that have been more heavily reworked or were not used in the final versions of the original projects. For instance, “Field“ was based on the sound design Németh created for the architectural film Domino. He had Martin Brandlmayr (Radian, Trapist) add drums to his original rough sketches, to which Stefan further added guitars, synthesizers and percussion.

“Luukkaankangas“ and “Soprus“ are basically identical to the original versions in the films and even retain the titles of those films. “Transitions“ was written as the main theme for “Ortem,“ but in the end was supplanted by something more abstract. “Via L4-Norte“ is the soundtrack to a film of Németh’s own, still under construction, about the utopian ideals at work in Brasilia and how the reality there compares to the rest of Brazil. Technically, Film is a blend of electronic sounds and acoustic instruments where it is often difficult to distinguish between real and generated sounds, and similarly combines free and conventional forms. The electronics function just as any other instrument, and are almost solely analogue synths. There are digitally generated sounds, but only from genuinely digital processes, and not replicas or recreations of the analogue world.