Bells of Atlantis

The text and video excerpt below document the book by Philippe Langlois, Les cloches d’Atlantis, musique électroacoustique et cinéma archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, éditions mf, Paris, first quarter 2012.

Bells of Atlantis by Ian Hugo (1951),

Text read by Anaïs Nin, taken from her book The House of Incest.

Music by Luis and Bebe Barron. The first music for a short film to use only electronic sonorities, produced in the Barrons’ New York studio.

In this “cine-poem”, the bells of Atlantis ring out from the mysterious depths of the ocean. The entirely electronic music of Louis and Bebe Barron is created from pulse generators, coupled with echo effects, so as to represent, ideally, a stylised and poetic underwater world. The abstract character of the electronic sonorities then takes the place of the imagined expression of the bells of the sunken ancient city, filtered through the thickness of the water, crystallising a distant sonic elsewhere. A simple rhythm of three notes, tirelessly repeated and looped, punctuated by blasts that die away in echo and by continuous electronic textures, creates the rhythmic musical base on which is arranged the clear, soft and tranquil voice of Anaïs Nin, fitting perfectly with the rhythm of the echo loops.

See the text of the poem in English as a PDF