About “Lair”

Tonight I’m listening to John Debney’s soundtrack for Lair¹, one of the much-hyped titles unique to the PS3. The score is excellent — evocative, textured, exciting without being immature — to the point that I went to check out whatever I could find about the game’s setting at the official website. Go there, click on the Behind the Scenes link and see what may be the best concept art gallery I’ve ever seen on a video-game’s website. It’s not just pretty, but informative. It really makes me want to know more about the designers were intending for the game to be (since their testimony is the closest I’ll probably ever get, since I vow to never buy a PS3). Dragon-riding sky-knights duking it out in a war-torn, post-apocalyptic fantasy world with a full orchestral score? Sound’s terrific. Too bad… about… the game, …though.

Music: John Debney, “Elegy”

_{1. I wouldn’t have known it was even released if I hadn’t searched for it, since iTunes does such a lousy job of listing, cataloging, and announcing their soundtracks.}

The Book As Clay

This dude, Brian Dettmer, carves up books like they were blocks of stone — if stone was loaded full of hidden Victorian woodcuts and juxtaposed words. The sculptures he ends up with are like nothing you’ve ever seen. Fucking amazing.

Following a couple of links and slipping a sawbuck into Google I learn that Dettmer’s a native of Chicago’s western suburbs who attended classes as Columbia College Chicago and eventually transplanted himself to Atlanta, like me. This is where the similarities end, I think. I work hard to get words into books, at which point they’re no better off. When he’s through with a book, it’s art.

I like to think this is just part of his reading process. This is something he does with his eyes and his mind, and he takes in a book. He sits down in a chair by the window to read a few chapters of, say, The Cults of the Roman Empire, and when he sets the book down on the coffee table, it is something else.

Noise: Underworld, “Shudder” (Live)