#patrick gleeson

so sick

Action Comics #1002

Terry Riley / Patrick Gleeson - Crossroads (1976)

My favorite discovery this week is this positively sublime Terry Riley / Patrick Gleeson composition, created to accompany Bruce Conner’s 1976 film Crossroads. I don’t want to overstate the case here, but the music here may have magical properties? I have never seen Crossroads itself and it doesn’t appear to be available anywhere online -- but you can watch an amazing excerpt over yonder. 

As terrifying as it is beautiful, CROSSROADS represents the detonation of a nuclear weapon with a yield equivalent to around 23,000 tons of TNT (the same as the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki) ninety feet below the surface of the ocean, under a fleet of abandoned naval ships floating in disrepair—test subjects for the bomb’s destructive powers. Almost in direct contrast to the rapid-fire blasts at the end of Dr. Strangelove, Conner’s film presents the test in its original film speed and from various angles, so that the viewer can experience—fifteen times over the course of thirty-six minutes—an almost mesmerizing sense of doom.

Sounds good to me! 

If you need more Riley in your life (and you do!), I also highly recommend this wonderful 1977 concert film. Terry is the greatest.