Since the genre’s birth in the early 1950s, the surf film has involved a synthesis of image and music. Typically these two key ingredients are sourced separately, mixed together only after the visual fact. Self Discovery for Social Survival subverts this recipe. Just like the osmotic waves that run through the film, the visuals and music of SDSS coexist and permeate as one to reinvent and reimagine what surf films can look, sound, and feel like.
SDSS works as a triptych – In Mexico, Los Angeles psych ensemble Allah
Las, join surf historians and professional surfers from the US and Australia in
sipping tequila, hanging ten across winding waves, and stumbling upon a
super-secret surf break (the location of which they will never reveal).
Allah-Las then return to their home studio to set off to record with their
analog equipment, this time ripping on the sound waves. The five songs by Allah
Las on the soundtrack, entirely instrumental and all aligned by different
variations of fruit jams, lay the foundation of classic surf aesthetic: tingling
guitars, sporadic yet attentive
percussion, and rolling bass lines.
In the second vignette, remotely held in the southern atolls of the Maldives
Islands, Los Angeles electronic pop dub duo Peaking Lights (Aaron Coyes and
Indra Dunis) carve their mark on the waves with a group of progressive young
Australian surfers. While
the gentle yet upbeat electronic echoes of Peaking Lights, reminiscent of
Broadcast or Arthur Russell, bounce across the screen, breathtaking aerial views
of wipeouts and vast underwater ocean shots take flight. Leaving bobbing heads
tread-ing ocean waters
that carry the whitest shade of blue, Peaking Lights move on land to their home
studio to delve into their two contributions to SDSS, “Mirror In The Sky”
and “Hold On.”
A near-silent symphony ending in Iceland, kiwi neo-psych musician Connan
Mockasin and MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden encounter slate grey waves, active
volcanoes, euphoric hot springs, massive glaciers, and wild mushrooms.
Surrounded in alien landscapes, dramatically darker in tone and movement than
other scenes in the film, SDSS emphasizes a side to surf that avoids
stereotypes. Heading from The Northern Lights to the north of Brooklyn, Mockasin
and VanWyngarden finally settle into Gary’s Electric (Mexican Summer’s in
house studio) exhorting a surrealist, emerald ending to mark a unique display of
the neo- surf film.
Mexican Summer stable staples Dungen and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma provide additional music and sound design to elevate the soundtrack to unknowable stratas.