For Your Eyes: Guerilla Percussionists

In 2001, Swedish directors, Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, made a musical short entitled "Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers" (see video below) that follows a group of six drummers into some strangers' apartment to make musical beats in all the different rooms from ordinary household furnishings. You can't help but smile and dance while watching the six of them layer one noise on top of one another. Who would've thought the varying speeds of a hand blender, the opening and closing of cabinet doors, and a couple of dog bowls could come together into one head-bobbing, beatastic composition?! Simonsson and Nilsson reproduced this idea into a full length feature in 2010 utilizing the same concept as the short but changed up the environment in which the percussionists' get creative with different tools within the city environment to make musical beats with. The new composition, "Music for One City and Six Drummers", is broken into four movements, each played by the six drummers in four different locations: a hospital, a bank, the exterior of a symphony hall, and hanging along the power lines of a power plant. The making of these anarchist city interventions had to be methodically researched and composed resulting in four years of work before the movie could even begin to come together! Drummers, sounds designers and foley artists had to work together to compile a pleasing mixture of noises thus making this work of art less about visuals (although it holds up quite well in that arena) and mostly about sound. In the same way skateboarders scan the city with a different set of eyes searching for what works in their advantage for flip tricks and grinds, the six guerilla percussionists scan the city seeking the correct tones and pitches to play out their greatest musical masterpiece. We saw a damn good movie last night... check the movie out for yourself! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVPVbc8LgP4