The Blackstar Experience 'She Felt A Memory' [Digital]

Sonically dynamic and meticulously textured sound design structures a dystopian narrative of processed sound sources from woodwinds to vocals, electronics, pipe organ, and field recordings. The Blackstar Experience, an intrepid collective of revolving collaborators led by Dakota Harrington, crafts a longform intuitive audio installation for procedurally-generated video by Vira Moore, presented on multiple screens in a warehouse setting.

The randomized narrative of the film directs The Blackstar Experience’s wash of buzzing soundscapes, weaved together with cathartic rushes of melancholy and dives into cryptic transmissions.


1. Down From The Clouds (0:00)
2. Shell Prodrome (5:00)
3. Aura/Onset (7:48)
4. Glitching Out (Seizure) (9:24)
5. Postictal: Stranded (11:17)
6. Real People First (13:15)
7. Marauders Pt. 1: First Strike (17:17)
8. Marauders Pt. 2: Hunting for Synths (Genocide) (18:20)
9. The Factory (20:49)
10. Dreaming While They're Screaming (30:30)
11. Disassembly (36:13)
12. She Felt A Memory (38:19)
13. I Am Not Your Machine (43:19)
14. Revolt (47:18)
15. On The Run On The Outskirts (52:08)

Est. 2014, The Blackstar Experience is an experimental music collective, initially operating as a dark ambient solo act. It has since evolved into an alloy of doom electronics, noise rock, experimental jazz, drone metal, and even contemporary classical. With a revolving door of collaborators, the sole focus of The Blackstar Experience has grown from deep, dark introspection, to expanding horizons further via reflection and collaboration.

She Felt a Memory is the score structured and recorded by The Blackstar Experience (Casey Cantwell, Madeline Kassen, Ryan Ebaugh, and Dakota Harrington) for the film installation, recorded, edited, and directed by Vira Moore.

"While Moore gave specific examples to other bodies of work, it was the footage and a vague remark made in passing that Moore made when they said: “Well she’s a cyborg living on the outskirts of society, ya know.” This vague and brief synopsis was what opened the floodgates for the tone by asking, ‘Why is she living on the outskirts and why is she a cyborg?” The music created by The Blackstar Experience incorporates technological and mechanical elements – a machine one might say of digital processing and sculpting.

This approach came about from the dark, glitchy footage, the warehouse setting for the installation, and the single sentence uttered by Moore. This inspired a sequence of scenes running through Harrington’s brain for a film that only existed in fragments, much like the main character's own memories and the installation itself, making a score for a story and stretching it like the sounds of the music. This composition employs woodwinds, vocals, synthesizers, guitar, pipe organ, field recordings, and warehouse utilies toward an effort at conveying a breaking point that is reached time and again, only to be used as a foundation to rebuild off, while constructing a space within the footage and generating a sense of ominous mystery and adversity.

In a world where life threatening and altering injuries are no longer such, humans now replace damaged tissue and organs with synthetic replacements. Our story follows the character through a dystopian world where they lost their vision in a horrific accident and had their eyes replaced. These synthetic replacements, although lifesaving, come with side effects. They maneuver through the world to overcome these side effects and regain their memory slowly over time. They must also overcome adversity in the face of bigotry for the very things that saved their life and where similar people are being concentrated into work camps. While working under horrific conditions and experiencing the horrors of man, it is here that our character finds themself and escapes with it."

-- Dakota Harrington