The Beast by Archive (Mike Hallenbeck)

“The Beast” is a collection of audio work compiled from my original music and sound design for “Nowhere Left to Run”-- a dreamlike, post-apocalyptic experimental film by Felipe Mafasoli. This collection reconstitutes the raw materials I generated and documented for the film, layering them into a new configuration for an experience facilitated exclusively by listening.

The collection isn’t concerned with COVID-19 specifically-- I created the soundscape for the film in mid-2019. But the 2020 edit and mix process has proven serendipitously appropriate for a polarized interval of both stillness and frenzy, reflection and panic, of a simultaneous longing for the social and the solitary. Mafasoli requested a soundscape with an elegaic quality, a memorial to a world lost forever. I have no idea what anyone else will take away from this collection, but to me it sounds like memories preserved in amber, shot through with the glitches of operator error.

These tracks coalesce around two disparate elements: 1) iterations of a fragile melody evocative of a lost past, and 2) a shifting landscape sourced from analog synth overtones, glacially swept into horizons of reverb and shifted pitch. Mafasoli wanted the soundscape to include incidental sounds of what life used to be like pre-apocalypse, so it made sense to incorporate field recordings of outdoor environments from my neighborhood years ago and from a city street downtown, where I documented my performance of the theme on a piano placed on the sidewalk for people to play in public (the recording also captures wind, passing vehicles, and snatches of overheard conversation).

Stream for free, or purchase if you like. For May and June of 2020, all profits will benefit The Food Group, a Minnesota food shelf.

Mike Hallenbeck is a composer and sound designer active in film, animation, advertising, and the performing arts. The Archive moniker houses some of his sound works that lie far off the beaten path.

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