Colin Stetson.
I never was the biggest Junji Ito fan, only having read his most famous works Tomie, The Enigma of Amigara Fault and Uzumaki. Yet I was very happy to see Uzumaki getting an animation when this teaser was released.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWF6UBz9Amc
Here, I conciously heard his music for the first time. The credits of the teaser list Colin Stetson under "Music." Hearing the strange trills and a faint voice of a woman who appears to be more crying than singing, I believed him to be some sort of composer that made the score with his MacBook. I was intrigued, but not enough to actually look him up. Only when I read the comments, I decided to dig deeper. According to one person, everything I was hearing was produced by a single man with a single instrument, the saxophone. Knowing that brass instrument mostly from my superficial and brief contact to Jazz, I couldn't believe this comment.
That's how a saxophone can sound like?
And that's when I looked him up. And yes, it was only a man and his instrument. But what a man he was. Having learned circular breathing like the Aboriginals do with their didgeridoos, he can play without pauses to breath in again. But there's something even more physical about his music. Colin Stetson has been a Marathon runner for 20 years and is genreally really fit. That means that his lung volume is really big, as is his stamina. Therefore he can play his instrument for dozens of minutes without the mouth piece ever seeing light. But that's far from everything that makes his music special:
When he plays or records a song, there's up to 40 microphones invovled. On his body, around the room and on the saxophone itself. Now remember that woman oddly crying in the Uzumaki teaser? That's not a woman vocalist. That's Colin Stetson's throat. One of the many microphones is attached to his throat and his circular breathing and incredible control over his body allow him to play the saxophone AND sing
at the same time, the mic picking up the sound directly through his skin. So with this particular setup and Colin's mastery of breathing and the instrument, he's able to produce the most intriguing of tunes, with even the secondary sounds the sax procudes being incorporated, because the opening and closing of the keys become a percussion instrument themselves when a microphone is very close to them.
And then I suddenly heard him everywhere. He made the score for movies such as Hereditary, the Colour out of Space and the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even when I snagged Red Dead Redemption 2 on a recent Steam sale I heard his unqiue sound. Turns out he's been accompanying me for longer than I had realised, I just never bothered to look him up.
Luckily, he was touring at the time I fell into that rabbit hole and immediately ordered tickets. Despite the Covid restrictions, I was able to listen to his perfomance in person and I will never, ever forget that night. His music incorporates an intense physical strain, you see him fight and get all red and sweaty, as his giant lungs pump vast amounts of air for twenty minutes to play the saxophone and sing at the same time. Even though I know that rationally, his suffering and fighting don't change the way the music sounds like, bein aware of it strangely elevated his music for me.
I listened to his albums and this is probably my favourite song of his. 15 Minutes that perfectly portray his skills and his physical and spiritual passion for music as an artform.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPg-g2vP8U