COVEN

2024

Roman Klaudo - music

Mary Maka - animation

Since ancient times, magic, fairy tales, shamanism, witchcraft, mysticism, and of course, music have played an important role in human life. Shamans perform sacred rituals, enter a trance state, and converse with the spiritual and demon world. The inspiration for this project comes from the mysterious novel "The Master and Margaret" by Russian author Bulgakov and the works of Nigerian author Amos Tutuola. Artist Mary Maka created a graphic project called "Endless Forest" and an animation script based on these works.

I was inspired by my Mary Maka project so I wrote the music using my own field recordings and field recordings of African explorers, synthesized sounds, and various musical instruments to create the atmosphere of this strange and magical world, a little scary but also cute at the same time. The composition is dedicated to the Coven of forest spirits, into which people’s fears turned when they gave these fears names. The composition exists in the format of an audiovisual performance - music made by me and animation made for me by Mary Maka. You can see the whole project with some interesting extra images at Behance.

I explore the facets of my music by performing this song in different forms. In Dilijan (Armenia) and performed it on the roof of the TUMO Center in the form of an Acousmonium (loudspeaker orchestra), playing on a multi-channel system of 6 powerful loudspeakers, controlling the signal using a special mixer Allen&Heat Qu-16. In this way, I created a sound spatial installation.

In Belgrade (Serbia), I played it in a KC Dorcoll gallery at the opening of the exhibition “Endless Forest” by May Maka, adding the sound of live instruments and live performance to the final sound.

Audiovisual project (spatial music piece + animation)