A series of Q&As with musicians, DJs, artists, label managers, promoters and others focussing on the internal dimension of creative practice.
Viewtiful Joe aka Jonas Bengio is a Casablanca-born producer and sound designer who lives in Paris. From the IDM stylings of his early releases to the electro-funk of his recent EPs on Casa Voyager and Welt Discos, Bengio has demonstrated an ear for a catchy melody and an interest in what makes a groove work. Alongside music production, he works as a freelance sound designer for film and animation, examples of which you can find on his Instagram page. When we spoke to him he was preparing for his first post-pandemic liveset at Berlin’s Paloma Bar. Our conversation, however, focussed on his work composing the soundtrack and sound design for the experimental film Saturn Breeze by Louis Mureau, currently in the final stages of production.
You mentioned you were doing the soundtrack for a short film.
It’s a very experimental thing by my friend who makes short movies. The movie is called Saturn Breeze and it’s a reworking of several poems, with the text transcribed into a mixture of words and images. It’s set all over Paris and is mostly visual, just using the camera and no effects. The film is 20 minutes and there are seven chapters, each with their own soundtrack. And he also wanted the sound of the wind in the music throughout
So you’re doing both the music and the sound design?
Yes. And another thing that’s important for the director is that the soundtrack could be an album by itself. So the movie comes together with the soundtrack, but the soundtrack could also live without the movie. There’s actually a real challenge of putting ambience into the movie while still making music – finding a balance between sound design and music, so that you can make an album out of it. If it was only sound design you’d just have clicks and footsteps!
And you’re working on it in tandem? Or is the film cut and edited and you’re just building the sound?
We always work together. Sometimes the music influences the direction of the movie, or sometimes something changes in the movie so I have to change the music. It’s always back and forth. I started working on this three or four years ago! We had some breaks along the way, but over that time I’ve had a chance to grow my skills, so what I’m making now in the final stages is much better than at the start.
How do you compose for what’s happening on screen in an experimental film, where things don’t follow an expected rhythm?
Some things can be super hard. Like if the image was changing very fast, I might want to make a pattern that fits a certain image, but then it would change. So you have to get out of the ‘loop’ mentality and find something more flowing. Then other times the picture changes really slowly. So I try not to follow the rhythm of the images too much. I try to create the global ambience of the chapter, then I work in layers around that.
It can be a very long process of finding the right sound to fit with the picture. That’s what I like about this kind of work – when you hear a sound and it doesn’t fit, you just see it straight away. It’s not like making music, it’s more obvious. When it’s in sync and it works, it clicks.
In some of the animations on your Instagram the sounds really work straight away, but the more you listen to them the more strange or unexpected they sound.
As long as a sound is on time that will already help it click. You can put down timing markers and then have fun with sound design – it’s completely open, you just have to be on time! But being on time can also be very annoying. It’s really tedious work, down to the millisecond. For example, the footsteps in the film were the most annoying thing I’d ever done in my life. It really has to be perfect. You zoom in and zoom in some more until you see the foot touching the ground and you put down a marker. When it’s not in sync you can immediately tell that it’s wrong.
Timing is important in music too, but maybe not quite so critical.
You have more liberty to do what you want. If you’re writing club music of course there are some basic rules you might follow, but I really try not to think “I’m gonna do four bars of this, eight bars of that.” I just record and then edit. I don’t want to spend too much time thinking about perfect timing. I just want different sections that I can work with.
Thinking about the footsteps, I think the reason I like sound design is that it requires a precision that I lack in my music. When I look at other producers, I see them spending so much time on specific sounds, but I don’t like doing that in my music. I just want things to happen fast. I get an idea and run with it. But when I’m doing sound design I do spend that additional time.
For a whole film that must add up to a lot of work, compared to a short animation.
Actually, since some of the animations are compressed, there’s a lot happening in a short time span. So you have a lot of work. In the movie there can be one shot that lasts for ages with just some ambience and drums. What makes the animations cool is how dynamic they are. It’s crazy because you can spend so long watching it and still you’ll miss some movements. I have a friend who I share every animation with before I post them, and he will often see stuff that I missed. And sometimes the maker of the animation will also say that what I’ve done doesn’t fit with what they had in their head.
Do you also go back and forth with the director of the film to make sure your choices fit with his vision?
He really gave me a lot of freedom. We have an ongoing exchange, but he told me to just do my thing. For the final chapter, I tried to make a new kind of glitch music. It’s really hard these days to make something very new, but this process really pushed me. Just making a drum pattern for hours to get super cool compound sounds. Rob Clouth is someone who really inspired me to make the final track in that way. You can do so much with one sound and one chain of effects. I make a lot less music these days because I’m experimenting much more with sound.
Where are the film and soundtrack at right now?
It’s almost done now, just a few sounds to finish here and there. We’re going to export the music without the sound design. It won’t be exactly like the music in the movie because that’s been cut, so we need to work that out still. Also it’s not really music that would go on an EP – there are a lot of parts without drums, just pads, synths and weird sounds. I’m not sure it’s an EP I can sell. Or maybe I can sell it, but I’m not sure who’s going to buy it!
Recommendations:
Rob Clouth is for me the master of bringing sound design into music. I listen to his stuff on Bandcamp and he has a website where he explains how he made every track. It’s a lot of patient experimentation, and he writes a lot of his own software. I’m not sure how long it takes him to make a track but probably months. There’s a specific album called Hidden Structures which is insane. And his VAETXH alias too – in my opinion that’s his greatest work.
I’ve just finished one of the coolest manga called Lastman. It’s a French team who made it, which is really rare – actually I’m not sure there’s another French manga! The comic is a prequel to a show that was on Netflix and there’s also a videogame. It’s amazing because they didn’t fall into the trap of copying the usual Japanese comics. It has its own personality, the story is really intriguing and very dynamic. The characters are all unique. You still have all the sexy ladies from the Japanese culture of course but the universe is wider than that. You start in the medieval era and almost end up in a Resident Evil type of game but I won’t spoil anything it’s really worth read the 12 chapters!
And of course if anyone wants to settle things straight, here’s my Switch ID for Super Smash Bros!: SW-5535-0651-1035
Follow Viewtiful Joe:
Follow Joe Delon:
.jpg)
.jpg)
