Wednesday 9 April 2008

"Voynich Manuscript" Californian music project...

Here's another (and actually quite good) example of the Voynich meme eking its elliptical way into the collective cultural consciousness: courtesy of MySpace, a Californian duo in Hollister have put out a couple of tracks inspired by (and under the name of) the Voynich Manuscript. I'm actually a musician/composer myself, so I thought I'd review them here for you, in case you're deaf or allergic to MP3s etc.

Their first track "Painted Lines of Perception" is a piece of electronica lightly daubed over a recording of ambient wind, with occasional urban-themed half-samples for colour. Voynichologically, I think the contrast between the wind (drawing?) and the music (paint?) does manage to evoke the kind of mismatched overpainting you get in the Herbal section, which came as a very pleasant surprise to me. It occasionally drifts into early 90s territory (slightly metally string pads), but it generally does its thing very nicely.

Having said that, their second track "Zodiacal Transmission" (a broadly similar ambient affair) doesn't quite work as well. My guess is that the pinging synth motif in the middle section is supposed to evoke the stars in the Astro section, but I'm having to work fairly hard to get this registering on my Voynichometer. The guys have worked hard on the mix, and I really like the stereo imaging they achieved: but it's not really as good as their "Painted Lines".

Good luck to them!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You keep citing individual Voynich nerds as examples of alleged ”Voynich creep”, but I don’t see it ... they’re still just individual nerds, and there have always been individual nerds. I think what you’re seeing is just more nerds?

Anonymous said...

JV, you just wrote that as an excuse to use ”Voynich creep” in a sentence!

Nick Pelling said...

At some point they'll become a nerd herd: and then we'll all be in trouble.

Don't deny it, you know it's true! ;-)