I’d cross any - Mothership Sessions, Kaitlin McSweeney
Recorded in one take at Mothership Studios in San Francisco, these sessions reflect an ongoing experiment of approaching composing as a conversation, done on the fly and in the moment utilizing, ideally, a balance of listening and speaking with sound. I had no preconceived idea of what the songs would be about or even sound like, and the results were like reading entries from a journal I'd forgotten about: emotional, personal and searching.
Huge thank you to Daniel Bozella for his kind and expert handling of the music throughout the entire process. Bozella is a recording engineer, musician and composer currently based in the bay area. He has a love of anything experimental and that can be captured naturally in the physical world. His productions have been featured on KEXP, XLR8R, KQED, Apple TV and in the sports highlights of English Football League channel 5 in the U.K.
Album art by Kaitlin McSweeney
credits
released February 3, 2024
writing, arrangement, vocals, piano, synth: Kaitlin McSweeney
recording, mixing, mastering: Daniel Bozella
Mothership Studios, San Francisco, August 2023.
Mothership Sessions
Love Poison - Conclusions From Youth, Wisdom Façade
Conclusions From Youth
Drawing inspiration from David Lynch films, sci-fi soundtracks, angst driven darkwave and transcendent symphonic composition, Conclusions From Youth is a desire-drunk tightrope walk of dissatisfaction and euphoria cloaked in late city nights, percolated by moments of glow: a neon sign, a halogen streetlamp, a glimpse of stars between the fog drifts. Kevin Balcora and Kaitlin McSweeney employ digital synthesizers, cello, piano and a broad spectrum of sampled audio, from field recordings to pieces of classical orchestral works, as they reflect on growing up in the Bay Area through the turn of the millennium. From the desperate, chant-like cry for a sense of security in “Safe” to the sleep spoken plea for everything to pause in “Stay”, Conclusions From Youth is an archive of yearning in a time and place of rapid and ceaseless change.
credits
released November 28, 2022
Arrangement, Instrumentation, Mixing, Production - Kevin Balcora
Arrangement, Instrumentation, Vocals, Lyrics - Kaitlin McSweeney
Wisdom Façade
Hungry Ghost
Hungry Ghost is a visualization of the never-ending desire that haunts us humans, unable to live in the present, but always shifting between our past and projected future. The film offers a glimpse into the grim and hazy underworld of insatiable human craving, but also tries to convey a sense of hypnotic beauty through rhythm and pacing.
Based on contemporary remediations of 19th century 'philosophical toys' such as the phenakistiscope and the zoetrope, loops are the essential building blocks of the film, resulting in a tangible form of moving image art.
Director: Guido Devadder
Editing & Color grading: Guido Devadder
Sound: Kaitlin McSweeney
Festival Awards: Hallucinea Film Festival (France - Special mention) - Brazil New Visions Film Fest (Brasil - Best experimental short) - Pupila Film Festival (Brasil - Best experimental short, Best original concept, Best soundtrack) - Off the Reel (USA - Best Experimental) - El Ojo Iluso (Venezuela - Mejor VideoArte Animado) - Ibrida Festival (Italy, special Mention) - Cinetoro Festival (Colombia, Honorable Mention) - Animocje (Poland - Special Mention Music Video), Encuentro Para Cinéfagos VIII (Venezuela - Mejor Video Arte)
Other festival Selections:Leuven International Short Film Festival (Belgium) - Pebbles Underground Film and Video Art Festival (Canada) - Bogotá Music Video Festival (Colombia) - Animakom Fest (Spain) - Bizarrya Short Film Festival (Portugal) - Ribalta Experimental Film Festival (Italy) - Asheville Fringe Art Festival (USA) - Ghent Short International Film Festival (Belgium) - Animatiba Festival Internacional de Animação de Curitiba (Brasil) - Attaque(e)r Le Visible, VIDEOAKTION#3 (Germany) - Anibar (Kosovo) - Viborg Animation Festival (Denmark) - Turku Animated Film Festival (Finland) - Flipbook Film Festival (Macedonia) - Brasil Experimental (Brasil) - The Animattikon Project (Cyprus/Greece) - L’Étrange Festival (France) - Denver Digerati (USA) - Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image (USA) - British Indie Festival Film & Music (UK) - CinemaZERO (Italy) - Experimental Superstars (Serbia) - Brighton Animation Festival (UK), Fest Anča (Slovakia)