EPISODE 28 — Psyché Tropes

Psyché Tropes Episode 28
11pm, 27 January 2025 on Resonance 104.4 FM

Presented by Steven McInerney, Psyché Tropes Episode 28 continues our look at the powerful use of drone as a cinematic device throughout film history—and how it can transform the moving image into a surreal, dream-like atmosphere. Dronemance II includes works by David Lynch, Alan Splet, Angelo Badalamenti, Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Andrei Tarvkofsy, William Friedkin, Barry DeVorzon, William Peter Blatty, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Geirî Ashiya and E. Elias Merhige.

The late David Lynch was a director who not only mastered this approach across his oeuvre of cinematic work; he made it a defining feature. Hum, wind, and noise were essential to creating the bleak, industrial atmosphere in his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), and would inform much of his later style. Lynch had a remarkable ability to transition seamlessly from scenes that seemed ordinary to those of existential dread. Over the years, he collaborated with sound designer and musician Alan Splet and composer Angelo Badalamenti, yet he also wrote and recorded in his own studio, producing a number of albums and sound for film—such as the undulating drone that features in the opening sequence of his 2006 feature, Inland Empire.

David Lynch considered the films of Federico Fellini a great inspiration. Both directors explored the subconscious, and Fellini experimented with the sound of sustained frequencies during the opening dream sequence of 8½ (1963) one of Lynch's favourite films. Lynch, got the chance to meet Fellini in Rome in 1993, just days before Fellini fell into a coma.

The drone found its way into the work of Luis Buñuel's surrealist films, another influential filmmaker for Lynch and Fellini. In Buñuel's 1950 film Los Olvidados, a misbehaving boy named Pedro's remorse turns dark in what could be considered one of the greatest cinematic dream sequences of all time. The scene is notably different from the rest of the film's bleak social realism, as it slows down to a disturbing and nightmarish interaction with his mother, accompanied by the sound of heavy, sustained wind.

In Andrei Tarvkofsy's 1979 film Stalker, as we journey into the zone, the droning waves of the synthesizer combined with the rhythm of the railroad give a sense of mystery, danger and dissociation. The scene has a dream-like, metaphysical nature to it, like venturing to the fringes of reality with only a one-way ticket.

The synthesizer is an instrument that sonically found its way into the jungle in another film released two years prior: William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977), with an original score by Tangerine Dream. In a mostly sequenced, arpeggiated soundtrack lies a paranoid, psychedelic menace of converging oscillations.

Barry DeVorzon’s use of drone in The Exorcist III (1990) leans on cacophonous vibrations and low, sustained tones that linger long after the film has ended. William Peter Blatty's film, based on his novel Legion, which evolved from the writer-turned-director's EVP tape experiments, is a truly underrated form of cinema with a good mix of psychological horror, strong characters, and even a touch of humour.

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s neo-noir psychological horror Cure (1997), about a frustrated detective dealing with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done, the musical effects by Geirî Ashiya brings ambient drones and subtle, droning hums sustaining a backdrop of pervasive anxiety. Kurosawa and Ashiya approach to sound creates an unsettling environment that seeps into mundane scenes, transforming everyday spaces into a form of ominous hypnotic tension.

In cinema, the drone seems to have become synonymous with the darker side of the subconscious mind, often exploring feelings of anxiety and dread. But more often, true horror comes in its implicit form, and perhaps drone combined with cinema is a powerful device for entrainment—a hypnotic tool that allows the audience to become more open to abstract ideas of horror that tap deep into the reptilian brain, that which is involved in aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual.

Playing out tonight's episode is by far the darkest of the programme. The 1989 film Begotten directed by E. Elias Merhige tells of the death of religion, the abuse of nature by Man and a nihilistic outlook on life, presented surreal, gory black and white 16mm.

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