“The compositional process starts with a sound, a thought or a idea of something rhythmic. Once the basis is established, I just join in the dots and add some color. Its very stream of conscious stuff, I would rarely re-record stuff, I like the idea to always using the initial idea you conceive. As for the lyrics, they are reflections and pictures, another instrument if you like. I have used the cut-out technique, famed by William Burroughs and David Bowie a few times too. This involves cutting out a number of sentences and words and randomly structuring them as you like. They provoke impressions, sense of location or an emotional thought. They are not about love, drugs, death. They are merely responses to the world, translated from visual to aural form. I am initially trained as a filmmaker and photographer, so I am visually orientation. I try to encompass that. So I hope to refine that idea with each recording.”

The interpretation of visual evocations through aural form can be attributed to O’Connor’s background in the visual arts, although, the compositional process, he says, differs when  contextualizing someone else’s artistic aesthetical vision as opposed to writing and performing his own music from scratch.

Neil’s show tonight in Cork sees him combining his musical education with his background in the visual arts when, as part of the French Film Festival programme, Somadrone will provide a live-soundtrack for the French film La Jette. “I was approached by Paul Callanan from the French Film Festival about doing a score for a film. I have performed soundtracks for Stan Brakage films and some other abstract animations in the past. La Jette is one of my favorite films so its a  pleasure to be doing it. I have done it a number of times before, but not on this scale and with as many musicians. La Jetée, is a legendary science-fiction film about time and memory after a nuclear apocalypse. It was released in 1964 and is considered by many critics to be among the greatest experimental films ever made.

“Chris Marker, who is the undisputed master of the film essay, composed this post-apocalyptic story almost entirely of black-and-white still photographs. The story concerns an experiment in recovering and changing the past through the action of memory, yet the film can be read as a poem dominated by a single moving image, which in its context becomes one of the supreme moments in the history of film. I know the film inside out, so I already had a lot of different impressions of sonically what I wanted to do. Its going to be haunting and beautiful at the same time,” he says.

Tonight, while all ears will be focused on the music created by Somadrone, the eyes will be on La Jette. However, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that, with all personal on hand, Somadrone offers a visual antithesis  to the tedium so often associated with electronic laptop acts. “The recorded material features layers and layers of sonic gum.

This is quiet hard to achieve live, so I try to play as much instruments live. I don’t believe in laptops on stage, I did it a few times before and found it futile and dull. So as a performer, if I found that, what did the audiences feel? I think they left actually. I guess if I had more members I would be easier, bit its impossible to make money from this form of music, so I have to be minimal by default.

Somadrone will perform alive soundtrack for La Jette, as well as his own set, at the Triskel Arts Centre tonight (Thursday, March 6).

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