Upstream Downstream (Missing Pages)

Following the very successful premiere of Missing Pages in SL, I’m now releasing my track inspired by the film. I’m happy to report that the track was well received and I’m especially pleased that writer/director Jerome Olivier enjoyed it.

Here are some notes about the track, Upstream Downstream (Missing Pages):

I love the way music functions in the film and I had no intention to second guess the composer’s choices. Instead, my track references the film in a stand-alone kinda way – actually I don’t think my track would have fit anywhere in the movie, besides maybe as end-credit music ;^)

It’s a downtempo chill-out track (like most of the stuff I’m doing at the moment) and the title refers to the idea of time as a river that gently runs either upstream or downstream. I was hoping to reflect the kind of utopian / ideal-world vision that Professor Tanokura must have had for time-travel when he was working on it, supported here by the samples from the press conference at the start of the movie – especially the part about using time-travel for peaceful purposes only.

I also wanted to explore the idea of time-travel musically. You’ll hear a number of places in the track where the audio has been reversed, ie. time is running backwards. There’s also a section towards the end that sounds like it’s coming from an old LP record – playing here with the idea of the present as viewed from a long ways in the future.

I was chatting to Chill / Mark Forman earlier about how music actually is the closest thing we have to a time machine right now… how, on hearing music you haven’t heard for years, you’re transported back to that place or frame of mind. Seems applicable here.

 

Upstream Downstream (Missing Pages) is currently the first track in the MoShang Radio sidebar player and you’re welcome to download and share the .mp3 here. If you’re having trouble downloading the .mp3 directly, try downloading the .zip instead.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.