Jason Sondhi
The director of Aleatoric, Andrew Sales, remarked that he consistently sleeps to the music of The Books. Perhaps worried of what that implied, he was quick to clarify: it’s not that their music is calming (or worse boring), but because he could always find some new detail to fixate on.
That feels like a perfect description for Aleatoric itself, a restrained profile doc where the seeming lack of energy belies an immense level of thought and careful craft that I find quite innovative. Utilizing a 4:3 aspect from an Alexa mini, presented split screen, Sales is able to present an opportunity for numerous, thematically complex readings, while attempting to translate the form and affect of The Books’ music to the visual medium.
On a fundamental story level the split screen is particularly effective by symbolizing the partnership of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong, the duo behind The Books. The relationship is strained, and they have not seen each other in 6 years, despite living within an hour’s drive of one another. They are recorded separately, and the split screen allows for a dialogue, a virtual conversation that could not be realized in life. At the same time it is a potent contrast—these are two very different men, and as the film allows them to expound on their inspirations, methodologies, and philosophies, Sales realizes that he doesn’t need to make a film about why The Books broke up—he trusts you in the audience to be perceptive and come to your own conclusions.
The split screen also allows for aesthetic opportunities, and the simplest technique by which Sales seeks to recreate the spirit of The Books in video-form is the incorporation of found-footage samples. One of the defining aspects of the duo’s music has been the immense breadth of samples they use, some from obscure recordings, but just as frequently snatches from the natural world. Paul has an immense library of VHS tapes that Sales was able to comb through and avail the production to, and the resultant footage provides an interesting pool of cutaways and sounds to the film—sometimes the metaphorical connections are profound, other times merely amusingly diverting, but there is a varied texture to proceedings that otherwise would be absent.
Speaking of texture, befitting a portrait on musical audio geniuses, the sound design and mix of the film is fantastic. I don’t count myself particularly astute on this front, my considerations regarding sound usually top out at “don’t be bad”, but I was noticeably admiring of the work of LA-based Jake Viator here—it is consistently interesting, with great presence and surprising in its soundstage. Of course this emphasis on sound is not only due to the choice of subject, Sales directs through Yours Truly, a creative studio famous in music circles now for several years for their stripped down, intimate live-recording and interview films. I’ve been a fan for a while, and as their operations have slowly grown to incorporate more agency-like functions (including this dope film series for Ray-Ban), it’s been fun to see the ambition of their films progress. So enjoy! I think this is perhaps the best piece I’ve seen from them yet (of course, I happen to be a huge long-time fan of The Books, so take that with a grain of salt…)