Music made by the creative collective that is The Pinkerton Agency is perhaps some of the most unusual and interesting around. The project is formed from the collective’s own interpretation of certain excerpts from Paul Auster’s book The Red Notebook. The concept itself is something you don’t come across too often, if at all. To accompany any literary experience with a relevant soundscape is quite appealing, though this latest release is far more of a stand alone experience than anything to run alongside of an additional activity such as reading.
For what starts off as a fairly mellow, industrial-sample led soundscape, the piece soon evolves into something quite beautiful. This culmination of sounds wouldn’t necessarily appear as beautiful by themselves, there’s a heavy sense of electronic influence to each sample, as opposed to anything instrumentally organic, but together they make for something extraordinary.
To consider that those who composed the track are literature nerds, among other things, is to realise and appreciate the complex structure of this recording. The music takes on the role of the story, and if you listen in full, the experience is very much that of a journey, not dissimilar to the sort we embark upon when reading fiction.
At 14 minutes long the recording is but a snippet in comparison to a feature length film or an album or the time it takes to read a book, but there’s something to be said for this chosen length of time. The average musical offering comes in at around three to four minutes, so it’s almost irrelevant to compare this to how any other song may work, and it feels far too free flowing to be considered an EP. It just is what it is, and it’s fascinating.
There are some real moments of wow that have been woven into the mix; there’s quite an epic sense of craftsmanship about the whole thing. A definite recommend, nothing like you’ll have heard before, an interesting and actually quite calming experience.
First we read the entire book into our phone’s dictation app, which made much of the text non-sensical. Then we have devised multiple methods for sonically interpreting the text. – The Pinkerton Agency.
