Shaman’s Plane

The eerie whooping and vocal gestures of singer Judi Silvano open Sonic Twist’s® video “Shaman’s Plane.” Her voice is doubled and split into different times and timbres, which suggested a shaman’s chant to me, one that summons forth spirits of earth and sky. Guitarist Bruce Arnold uses a powerful loop generated between SuperCollider and his Delay Llama processor on electric guitar. This produces a wide variety of evocative sounds, from a subterranean rumble to raindrops in a meadow. A tableau of brilliantly colored images takes the viewer on a hallucinatory journey, until the music returns us with actual performance footage of Sonic Twist® as they created the music in real time; reminding us that we are still on earth and off the “Shaman’s Plane!” I used my own artwork in alcohol markers, plus scans of Central Asian textiles from my collection, as well as some Native American rattles to support the visuals.