Album Walkthrough: Live At The Modern

One of the stock blog topic ideas we have is an 'album walkthrough' in which the artist shares insight behind their record. This is what Ryan Watts, the artist behind Akira Film Script, chose and for a 15 track album that's an hour and three quarters long, I suspected that this post might be packed full of behind the scenes insight!

Ryan's album 'Live At The Modern' was released in July as part of the digital-only eRecords series and some of you may know he has a new release out on Hamburg based label Seehear it which you can check out HERE.

When I first received a message from Ryan I was immediately intrigued by the artwork for his album; a modern building set within a field of bright yellow flowers and a perfect summer's sky. What I didn't know until now, (other than the bonus images inside the bonus PDF with the download) is that there were additional images as part of the series! Ryan sent these over as part of the blog post, which starts with a music video produced by Brookfield Duece...

'Live At The Modern' is an Ambient album with no beginning, and no end (live rhymes with give, in this case) - it lives in the moment; in your now, or The Modern - more on that in a second…. Understandably mistaken, this album is not Live @ Somewhere, unless live @ my studio counts!

The intention here was to make an Ambient-concept album centered around drone Ambient (if a sub-genre definition is required for your attention, or lack thereof) with other sonic flourishes that fully sink into (for the most part) the full Ambient experience; interesting enough if played loud, but fading nicely into the background if played quietly. The concept portion is rooted in the intention for the listener to hit shuffle every time you play the record, with over 32k variations of how you'll experience the set - essentially, you'll never hear the same album twice! It’s ’The Modern’ that you ‘Live At’ every time it’s played. Now, even though the track order you’ll forever see is effectively a throwaway (outside of one listen through in this order), the content within is far from that - in fact, this is some of my most deeply imbued music to date, and as such, I'm very excited it landed on Whitelabrecs and found a home within their Ambient community.

One last item of note before we get underway - a massive thanks is due to Thomy at SeeHear Recordings in Hamburg, Germany. Without his astute input, this album would literally have song titles like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...however, he'd pointed out a no-name-set-of-tracks that's supposed to be shuffled is counterintuitive to this numerically ascending format as it implies a continual sequence of events; I saw his point immediately (I'd originally jettisoned track titles to help with the shuffle-first format; less association if they're nameless), and it was with a great stroke of genius that Thomy himself discovered there were 15 tracks, and 15 letters in "Live At The Modern" and as such it was decided that each track should embody a letter of the album title, and where duplicates became troublesome, just add a . (period) or two at the end and move on with our lives - brilliant effort to aid in the randomness of it all in my opinion, and here we are today.

Without further ado, I'd like to walk with you, track-by-track, through my inspired shuffle-concept album, 'Live At The Modern'.

L

How do you start an album that has no beginning, and no end? Moreover, how do you begin something with no beginning!? Inevitably, folks will put this on and just hit play, so it needs to sort of begin somewhere...right? With all that in mind, I wanted to represent the theme of the album in a cohesive composition - one that was a mission statement for the entire record. Insomuch, each song on this project is built upon what I call "evolving stems" - each is slightly varied from another, then woven together in a somewhat random fashion. I like to think of them as little parallel universes. "L" is a song that comes in and goes away, no apparent start, no definitive final note - just you entering its field, playing about for a few minutes, then exiting the field while it carries on, away from your ears, as your path diverges away from the composition.

I

Karl the Fog. If you've ever visited San Francisco, or any of the greater SF Bay Area, you've encountered Karl, whether you knew it, or not. Growing up where I did, 45-minutes south of San Francisco, on the southern tip of the bay (17-minutes as the crow flies), surrounded by marshlands, there's a fair bit of fog throughout the year. As an adult, in the same area, I cross bridges (lots of bridges in the SF bay area), sometimes wrapped in dense fog, with very little visibility. Sometimes I'll roll down the window, just to feel the clouds on my skin; Karl on my skin, more properly. There's a certain mysticism to Karl, or all my travels. It's spiritual, hell - it's been given a name - a personality, an identity! Karl has its own terroir - its own unique sense of place. "I" encapsulates all that for me; walking, riding, driving through the fog, lights compressed, with this specific gray, evenly distributed, and a certain density/moisture to the air - it's always felt very 'Blade Runner' to me (the first film), and as such, this whole composition was created with analog equipment to (attempt to, hopefully?) recreate that 'Los Angeles 2019' vibe that the original Vangelis soundtrack captures so incredibly beautifully.

V

My whole life, I've felt punk-adjacent. I mean I love pop music and all the mainstream culture stuff well enough, but the things I always gravitated towards were left-of-center. Insomuch, it was important for me to have some form of a punk statement within this record that otherwise peacefully drifts in and out of worlds through my little 'parallel universes' within. "V" is that. A letter V represents a single origin point, and two possible paths diverging from that inception point. If you pay attention and turn "V" up, you'll notice random intervals where the song literally hits a hard reset to the origin point of the loop. There's no interweaving of multiple takes here. One take, cut at random intervals, resetting to the beginning, establishing this unpredictable loop, that honestly can be a bit unnerving as you never know when it'll reset again. You're not in control as a listener, and the song's not so kind to let it all blissfully slip away. In a world where we're continuing to lose control, against our will, at the behest of a few rich assholes with alleged power (who grants them this anyways?), "V" is a statement. "V" will not be blissed out. "V" will not quietly amble on. "V" is anger, resistance, frustration, and uncertainty embodied in this apparently peaceful little composition, unassuming - not entirely unlike the hidden message in the classic "Mr. Tambourine Man" song, or songs that are akin.

E.

If each track on the project is a representation of parallel worlds clustered together, "E" is the portal by which we travel between the various clusters; not unlike The Ways in The Wheel of Time series (albeit my "Way' is much safer). Consider it an audio representation of the wormhole that ties these worlds on this album together. Here we take an extended 12-minute rest from the worlds to be in the connecting tissue, and absorb its surreal beauty, before stepping out into our next world...

A

Growing up where I lived as a child, blessed enough to raise my family there today, we have tons of Asian influence, from all corners of Asia. So it's not a big surprise that I was aware of the Hagakure when I was growing up. That said, it wasn't until Jim Jarmusch's 'Ghost Dog' film that I took an interest in actually sitting down to read it. Our access on the west coast, and connection to Hawaii, kept an incredibly robust quantity of Japanese media and mediums accessible to us - this only amplified with the advent of the internet and global connectivity (which is oddly at risk nowadays, in 2025 nonetheless...shameful, really). I read Rashomon in high school. In college, I read the Vampire Hunter D literature series. I've been blessed with access to all sorts of manga and anime. Long and short, it was all here, and highly accessible before global online markets made these things hyper-accessible today. Now, back to the Hagakure - and not to get into any specific passages or favorites, of which there are many - the learnings and tales in the passages are all deeply rooted, and very important, in-and-of their historical moment; the understandings do transcend time today, but the actual written context was very for its moment...for its 'Modern' if you will. Many of the Hagakure's passages are deeply pragmatic, and give a deep sense of resolve. As much as you focus on, and find things of beauty, in life, you also focus on your retainer, and your place in this life. "A" embodies the emotion of the general pragmatism that one should embody reading the Hagakure, and reflecting on your place in life, your place in society, and your place within the people who give you means (generally by way of pay; your 'retainer' as the Hagakure would put it) - especially in Western society where we have a different set of values and relationships with that.

T.

"T." is the shortest composition on the album, without doubt - blink, and you'll miss it. All societies and worlds have a creation story, so, if I was hard pressed to say where the album's "true form" begins from, the true 'first track' is "T." Before we're born into this world, we're connected to our mothers with our umbilical cord. It gives us everything we need, mainlined. Once we're born, the cord is cut. Few weeks later, it fell off like it was never there. In the grand scheme of say a 100-year lifespan, your umbilical time is, well...blink and you'll miss it. Thinking on umbilical cords, and the gestation of new life, there needs to be a mother - without her, you have nothing going through your cord. My album "Fox" on Off Records is the mother to T.'s connected cord. Yes, Live At The Modern is ostensibly a followup to Fox, but only in the mother-child relationship, not a part 1 and part 2, or sequel work to the prior. There's another story to this track, more directly related to an actual fox, but I'll save that for another time; ask me if you ever meet me in person - it's a great story over a pint or two!

T

Growing up with films in the 80s and 90s, one of the things I adore about cinema from the era was that there were worlds that didn't necessarily have to explain themselves - every detail, every texture, were full immersion (think: Blade Runner, Legend, Dark City, Dune, Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The NeverEnding Story, et al.), and with a young mind at the time, drawn to such tactile worlds, it was very easy to "live within them" as we had no devices, no internet - we got BORED...A LOT, and as such, I'd retreat into these tactile worlds, within myself - call it proto-fan-fiction if you will - and I'd live within these worlds, daydreaming away. It was healthy, it was nice, it's a lost art nowadays. You could literally feel, smell, and touch these places in your mind, and as such, these indelible places became very real. It's no surprise that I love Blade Runner - just listen to my discography - from techno, to noise, to ambient - there's a ton of cyberpunk and Vangelis-inspired works to be found. Tangent: one day I plan to release a greatest hits collection that's literally all the "Blade Runner music" that I've created over the years (obviously it won't be marketed as such, but now you have the keys to the collection's largest Easter egg when it drops on December 32nd, 2101). Back to the story at hand: Deckard's apartment feels very lived in (we can debate plot reasons here another time), although we mainly experience his apartment at night (a few times we see it with waning light coming through), but what does it look and feel like during the day, when we can see the dust softly floating on the wind, settling on his piano, or picture frames? Now, what does that sound like? "T" is my answer to this line of questioning, and the newest addition to the forthcoming AFS greatest whatevs collection...

H

Following the line of thinking on 80s and 90s films, I love the film Legend, and not for the film alone (which itself is God-level in my book - I'll die on this hill: Tim Curry was never better - let the hate-and-debate begin; on everything, his best performance), but separate, and disproportionately in the lead is the Tangerine Dream OST. I. Love. Legend. Although every facet of my ambient output is in the opposite direction, I cannot think of an ambient band I love more than Tangerine Dream; as much as I emulate Vangelis, Roach, Lanois, Eno, et al., I really wanted to make a Legend OST-like track over the last 20+ years of music creations (note: I did NOT say TD-like track - that's beyond my means, and school), and I think I finally hit close to my mark. Thinking on "H" - I cannot stress that this has been a 20+ year journey to this composition - every attempt prior resulted in something I'd never show publicly. Thankfully this record exists in case it takes another 20+ years to find this ambient space again...

E..

I love Space. Astronomy to Astrology. I LOVE Space. I love the idea, the concept, the fact we live in it. Everything about it fascinates me - beyond measure, or compare. It's probably best to never get into a conversation with me about particle physics, or string theory, or conceptual physics, because I will go... I love it, I love it all - now rocket science? I couldn't tell you anything about that; if I understood the velocity it took to get me out of here, I'd have perfected it, and been gone a looooong time ago - no offense to any of my worldly counterparts. I love space. I wanted to make a composition that felt like how I see space in my mind. The way it would feel to move within it, with a sense of wonder, and uncertainty. "E.." somehow reminds me of the Enterprise, the good old USS Enterprise, NCC-1701. I'm a bigger Star Wars fan, but my father is a Trekkie, through and through - bless him for it; this is a track in part about my father, and our relationship, told through a space opera, aboard the Starship "E.."

M

Herein lies a number of false starts. I kept trying to push this composition, but I kept hitting walls. I hadn't realized everything that needed to be here, was already here. What you hear are layered versions of the start of the song, each failed beyond our purview, and as such, layering the starting remnants created a composition within themselves. The narrative here is the pairing of all the false starts, in loops over time, and how they create new spaces, and washes of tone and sound, taking something effectively failed, and creating new life from these false starts - learning from your mistakes, by repeating and refining, till all that's in your wake is beauty and calm. "M" as a letter itself has always represented peaks and valleys to me, how many peaks are you willing to climb? This is a composition representing that. As well, how else to represent the theme of 'the album with no starts and stops' than a composition filled with false starts - it never began in essence, so it could never end...

O

"O" - an infinite circle. That's all this track is, passed back over itself over and over - processed further and further in a circle. Then I played on top - later cycled as well to a circular flow. Grains of that process are again looped back on themselves, creating new sonic layers. Again, "O." - an infinite circle. There are many ways to convey this concept: ∞, 8, OO..., or simply, O.

D

Written in D Dorian, from the grandchild of a grandfather who owned a DeLorean. After the track was finished being post-processed, it landed somewhere sonically around D# Dorian - so still somewhere close to the intended target. I love the fact that playing in Dorian gives a composition that feeling of downturned, emotive minors, but can strike a hopeful sense as well; It all feels good to me - it's my emotional resonance point with ambient compositions, and with my favorite modal jazz inspirations. I found that slightly modifying the original output of this composition by pitching it up ever so slightly added to the weight and impact of the notes and how they land throughout, and as such, it became what you hear today. A little creativity with a home turntable (or DAW), and you can hear the original version too.

E

I grew up watching clouds - I grew up before the internet. My best friend Lisa and I would literally lay down and watch clouds, generally filtered through the leaves of my family's cherry tree; sometimes bare and wide open. It was the best of times. We'd literally just look up at the sky. To dream, to imagine, deeply. What was up above those clouds? What was it like to stand on them? Maybe now you'll understand my love of feeling Karl on my skin from my earlier tale about composition #2 (numbered loosely, lol), "I" - I, I've been fascinated by clouds, and weather in general, for a very long time. The cycle of days and seasons. I had some friends growing up, as we lived very close to train tracks, who literally loved trainspotting. I loved skywatching. I still do to this day. "E" is the clouds. It's what they literally feel like, smell like, what they bring, and what they leave behind.

R

I love sailing, although, admittedly I'm not a sailor - granted I've spent a fair amount of my life's time on boats, especially with my proximity to the San Francisco Bay. I grew up watching sailing races; I've been to the Louis Vuitton Cup and the America's Cup. I once co-owned a boat in a past life with some co-workers from a decently sized restaurant group. I find freedom in the ocean spray. The fragrance, the feel, the briskness. "R" to me embodies that feeling of the moment you're sailing along smoothly, just about to hit a small wave or wake and feel that burst of the ocean on your skin - like a moment suspended in time.

N

I was in college in the early 00s, and spent a fair amount of time with my closest college friend David. In fact, I eventually moved into David's place when I first officially moved to San Francisco in the mid-00s alongside one of my best friends, Joel. The three of us were art and music nerds, each with our own discipline, but we found lots of time to collaborate and exchange each other's musical interests and philosophical ideas. At the time, IDM was exploding; yes it's much bigger today, but this was peak Replex Records, Smack Records, etc. period, not to mention all the big names dropping on Warp too. One thing that really stood out to us at the time, and outside of the Warp-o-sphere (strangely enough) was this American duo, Telefon Tel Aviv - this was something David, Joel, and I could agree on, easily. The first time we heard 'Fahrenheit Fair Enough' from their debut by the same title, it was like time stood still. I'd never heard something electronic be so succinctly emotive, suspending, and forward-thinking all at once. It was absolute beauty. And on second listen, it only got better. It's grown on me ever since, like a mold, lol. Only twice in my 20 years+ musical writing and production career have I tapped into that space with one of my works, and both only in the last 2-3 years. It's taken a long time to find that sense of musical nirvana. "N" is one of those two moments, the other being a yet unreleased remix for my good musical friend Tom who writes programs for Ableton more regularly than he does his own beautiful music. I guess, if an album with no beginning and no end had a closing track of sorts, this would be it - emotive, reflective, dreamy, nostalgic to me in a way. Considering 'Fahrenheit Fair Enough' led its setlist, I could argue 'N' could have done the same here, but therein lies the reason to shuffle - I could argue this could land anywhere in the setlist and still check all its boxes and not disrupt the greater flow.

And with that, the album with no beginning, and no end, is laid bare. I'll bid everyone adieu for now, and let you all get back to your own daily shuffles, as I shuffle off into mine.

If you'd like to explore all fifteen tracks of 'Live At The Modern' you can stream and download it HERE. This is part of the digital-only eRecord series and includes a bonus PDF booklet of polaroids and liner notes. If you want to hear more of Ryan's work, you can check out his Bandcamp page HERE