What happens when two Canadian super-freak visual artists and musicians come together over Dropbox? You get a wild and creepy true experimentation between digital imagination and analog limitation. It’s called Seed of Dorzon and it’s a 30-minute two-part atmospheric and unusual electronic collaboration between Alberta’s dark horse Chad VanGaalen and Nova Scotia’s Seth Smith (Dog Day).This summer, Smith was working on short films to follow up his 2012 horror feature Lowlife while VanGaalen was scoring his animated flick TARBOZ. Smith, who also scored Lowlife, says the fantasy-film vibe likely shaped the otherwise organic process. “We began emailing each other late-night beat jams and it just snowballed from there,” says Smith, “We’d pass back and forth a single track mix-down and you couldn’t really take away from it, only build. It was more spontaneous and exploratory than writing the usual pop song, a fun challenge, a great way for a couple of hermit dads to make music without leaving the house. Jazz for shut-ins.”Continued below…VanGaalen adds: “We were both excited about the project having no rules, and the process was great. It was like getting a present from a dream world in the mail.” VanGaalen, who typically self-records and produces (as does Smith), says he’d record the files to his sampler, “And then run it through a pile of pedals or synths and just jam along to it in real time. It was very simple and satisfying to let things grow like that,” he says, “I’m excited for the future of this project.” The seed has been planted.
Adria Young is a writer living in Halifax. Follow her on Twitter.