SPACE WHALES
Tom Eisenbraun is a musician based out of Nashville, Tennessee. In 2015, I got to work with him for an episode of a music performance blog called "Colonel Saunders Kitchen," where each episode is shot in a single shot in a kitchen and the audio is recorded straight to tape.
I was very taken with Tom's performance and what he had to say about it.
What Tom really reinforced for me is the message that music isn't about how expensive your instrument is. It isn't about how many people are listening, or how many views you get. It's about hearing something that speaks to you, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your instrument, and making the sound that you want. It's about ideas, exploring with your instrument, and taking risks.
In his piece performed in "Space Whales," Tom interweaves two different stories into a single instrumental performance: 1) Clyde Tombaugh took the first photo of Pluto and thus proved its existence using his own homemade telescopes in 1930. 2) The 52hz Whale (or "The Loneliest Whale") has no other whales which sing its song and wanders the planet by itself, singing its song alone.
Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/52-hertz_whale
In his performance, Tom uses the weaknesses of his Fender Squire to his advantage, creating resonance through tapping certain points on the guitar and using the speaker on his phone to feed space sounds and the 52 Hz whalesong itself into the poorly-shielded stock pickups, creating a unique, dense soundscape as he plays alongside the samples.
We recorded the audio for the performance using a single condenser mic to pick up the room (as shown in the video). It was recorded straight to the reel-to-reel pictured.
Kick back and listen through this deep cut.
Big thanks to Tom Eisenbraun for letting me listen. Other thanks goes to Alex Robinson, the head and producer of CSK; Warren Smythe, whose cinematography led the whole project; and Eric Loomis, who made the audio come to life through each episode of the blog. And of course the rest of the Saunders crew, whether they helped on this project in particular or not.
"Space Whales" premiered at the Artlightenment Film and Art Festival in 2015 and won the award for "Best Artistic Direction."
Check out more of Tom's music here: https://tunes.eisenbraunmusic.com/
Colonel Saunders is here: https://vimeo.com/colonelsaunderskitchen
Director: Chris Ranker
Producer: Alex Robinson
Cinematography: Warren Smythe
Music By: Tom Eisenbraun
Sound Engineer: Eric Loomis
Photographer: Sarah Addleman
Gaffer: Emmerson Caddell
Set Decoration: Christina Healey
Set Production Assistant: Sarah Clanton