BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Think the worlds of composition and skateboarding couldn’t be further apart?
Sam Perkin is here to prove you wrong.
In his newest project Grey Area, this Irish composer has united these passions to help every listener understand what it feels like to skate.
Grey Area is a film that reveals the culture of skateboarding as set to Sam’s intense score. The music pulls inspiration from the textures and actions of this popular artform of the city streets.
Sam tells us about how he put the work together, before the Crash Ensemble performs its Irish premiere this 19 April. (And what do the musicians know about skating, you ask? Well, they’ve tried it out for themselves, too.)
Not in Ireland for the live premiere? Read on and you’ll find a video showing some of Grey Area right here with us.
Hi Sam, tell us about Grey Area. I’ve never heard of a project that’s combined skateboarding and composition in this way! How’d you get on board (pun totally intended)?
Blending the essence of street skateboarding with contemporary music, Grey Area is a hypnotic nocturnal journey through the streets, leading us to secrets that we find only if we are open to them.
It was composed for Crash Ensemble, who perform live in a highly synchronised way with the film. All of the sounds were removed from the film and we hear Crash ‘play’ the sounds, rhythms and colours of skateboarding and the city.
It’s a pretty exciting time to be a composer, being able to create projects like this one and combine different artforms that were never mixed together before. On top of this, I think listeners need to be genuinely stimulated in new and intriguing ways.
How has your experience of skating informed the style of music you wrote here? In the video, we can see some of your instrumentation reflecting the textures and movements of the skaters on screen. Tell us more about your composition.
I’ve been a composer and a skateboarder from a very young age, so all of the sounds of skateboarding are in my blood, so to speak. On top of this, when you spend time being part of the fabric of the city, this soundworld becomes part of you.
All of the sounds and rhythms of street skateboarding had to be orchestrated, which was a painstaking process. When you see and hear it live, with Crash creating these ridiculous rhythms that sync to the millisecond with what you see in the film, all of the work was worthwhile.
Shot entirely in two Irish cities, Dublin and Cork, the piece has two different worlds which are shown in relief, each one complementing the other. The Dublin (shot by Niall O’Byrne) layer was shot in slow motion, and follows a skateboarder from the centre of a gritty city to its outskirts. The Cork (shot by Sam Curtin) layer intersperses energetic, glitchy shots of a skateboarder interacting intimately with their landscape.
These two worlds collide, the meditative with the energetic. The nature of the harmonies from the wave-like music in the slow atmospheric layer emerge from the hum-like harmonies we hear in the city at night. Interspersed with this, we hear Crash coming in with the energetic stuff. It’s quite impressive to see them doing it live!
So did you compose to the vision, or have themes in mind before you began?
There are no themes in the piece, at least in the classical sense. […] Many unpredictable things happened in the city at night during the filming, which were also orchestrated. Thanks to percussionist Alex Petcu, we found a radiator on the street that was perfect for creating some of the right gritty street sounds.
The order was quite important, in that it was essential to do film element first, then the composing part. Naturally, the orchestration of the skateboarding and city sounds couldn’t be done before having the footage. I actually edited the film entirely first with no sound, then created the atmospheric backdrop to which the glitchy material was then interspersed. It was a very different working method.
How do fellow composers react when you tell them you skate?
That’s a tough question. I mean, from one perspective, skateboarding and music are different; but from another they’re really similar. I suppose street skateboarding is rebellious in nature, even if some skateboarders don’t see it like that. I feel like quite a few streaks of contemporary music are rebellious in nature, too.
With Crash Ensemble, the idea seemed so at home that there wasn’t even any question of, like: ‘This is weird, should we really do this?’. It just felt right at home for them and for me, and that was a pleasure.
Fellow composers react differently depending on their age, though generally they’ve been really into it. Skateboarders have been appreciative, seeing their artform from a new perspective. Skateboarding definitely does have some negative stereotypes. But then again, what doesn’t?
I wanted to create a meaningful and accessible window into the world of street skateboarding for people.
Crash Ensemble learnt how to skate in a recent project from Jennifer Walshe: /And Jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, which will also be performed at your Irish premiere. How do you think this new skill has changed their music-making?
I think the best answer to this question is that Crash are up for anything!
Footage of Crash learning how to skate (or falling!) will be projected for her piece, which is improvisatory in nature. They follow their imagined ‘skate paths’ while performing. It should be fun.
These two very, very different practices are beautifully matched in this music piece and film. What can we learn from each other by exploring works like this, which encourage us to see the world in a different light outside our own single interests?
It has taken me quite a few years to find a way of blending the two together in a meaningful artistic way. This was paramount for me, as I didn’t want to just superficially botch the two together for no reason.
On the surface, I wanted to convey the unique feeling of liberation that street skateboarding brings, and share how skateboarders look differently at architecture and their landscape. Anyone who knows a skateboarder will know how, walking down the street, they can get very excited by a bench or a bizarrely shaped bit of concrete!
Deeper down, and most important for me artistically, I wanted to transport the listener and viewer into the mind of a skateboarder on this nocturnal journey, just letting your mind wander; no place to be, no time constraints, accepting the unpredictability, just being, opening yourself to the chaos.
Is there anything else you’d like to add before we give it a watch?
The choice of who would be the two skateboarders in the video was key: it couldn’t be just anyone. I asked two unique skateboarders and friends to be involved in the project, Charles Neilson and Paddy Walsh, whose natural and flowing style was the obvious choice in conveying what I wanted to convey for the piece.
I am very grateful to the talent of Niall O’Byrne and Sam Curtin, whose videography is so engaging. The world premiere of Grey Area took place in Musica Nova Festival, Helsinki in February 2019. The piece was commissioned by Engage Arts Festival, and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland.
The Irish Premiere of Grey Area is sponsored by MusicTown and will take place at The Studio, National Concert Hall, from 5pm April 19.
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Images supplied. Steph captured by Graziano di Martino.
