Ehsan Gelsi: Ephemera | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Despite his great ability to channel the sounds of electronic pop, my impression is that Ehsan Gelsi doesn’t really come from that world. He’s described as ‘a performer, educator and specialist’ and to add some context to that I think you could also call him a gearhead and salesman for the cutting edge in sythesiser tech; one blessed with a deep knowledge of its history, everything that has led up to this point. I think he’s a few other things besides -I’ll get to those in a bit- but it’s the sum of all these Ephemera which becomes the overwhelming force of his new work.

Commissioning him for the latest piece of public art on Melbourne Town Hall’s Grand Organ was an inspired choice. The series has gone all over the place, lending its massive sound to a talent as left-field as, say, Sarah Mary Chadwick, who’d previously worked on pawnshop synths, barroom pianos and savagely distorted guitars; more recently Naretha Williams employed it to deliver a darkly thunderous and supernatural reinterpretation of indigenous history, riffing on the malevolent soundtrack work of the likes of John Carpenter and Goblin. Gelsi is like the sunburst after Williams’ storm, his forty minute composition, Ephemera, is packed with peak after inspirational peak of synthesiser brilliance, given breathless momentum by its live percussion accompaniment and underwritten by the overwhelming firepower that only the Grand Organ can provide.

So much of what, today, has come to be known as synthwave pays homage to the father of synth-horror, John Carpenter, it can be hard to remember that there was anything else happening in ‘70’s and ‘80’s cinema. What of Vangelis? Moroder? Tangerine Dream? In different ways they pushed the boundaries of synthesised soundtracks and you can find facets of all these, especially their more heart-warming and optimistic elements, in Gelsi’s work.

I get the feeling that he can borrow, probably on the fly, from whomever he likes, but in Ephemera I sense a closer affinity to the work of Wendy Carlos than any other. I was reminded of her passion for synthetic recreations of classical works (in A Clockwork Orange, for instance) by a suspiciously familiar echo of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D, one that you won’t have any problem recognising halfway through the first act of Ephemera. Not only that, but her landmark soundtrack for the film Tron, which has been inspiring a new generation thanks to its revival by Daft Punk, rings out here too, with alacrity.

There’s not even any need to go back to the ‘80s for this kind of fantastic soundtrack synthspiration: the technology only gets better, year after year and there’s no shortage of latter day greats putting it to work. Cliff Martinez’ Drive soundtrack or Mark Mothersbaugh’s composition for Thor: Ragnarok are two good examples of ‘80’s inspired material that is better than the largest part of what the decade actually produced. Ephemera fits snugly into this canon of historically informed works.

Another thing struck me about Gelsi and made me wonder just what his focus is in creating Ephemera. If you go to his surreptitiously hard-to-find bandcamp page, you’ll discover reams of composition, torrents even, in a very similar style to the gleaming joy of Ephemera and of a similarly high standard. What’s more, the largest part of it is available for free. It made me feel the same gentle sadness as when I visit production music sites: many of the best popular musicians know there’s no money in writing a good song, so they churn out volumes of them for use as wallpaper and ad music and a very modest return. It appears Gelsi is remunerated well enough by his music tech business and other pursuits that he’s not even bothering to claw that much back. It may even be the case that his primary interest is not actually creating a body of work, but rather it’s the means of making it which obsesses him. In the liner notes to his latest creation he describes it thus: “I’ve always loved being surrounded by musical instruments. They’re magical and powerful. Whether idle or in song, they fascinate me. An instrument can cast a powerful spell alone, or in concert with others, combining into an epic force to inspire and move people.”

So when he performs Ephemera in concert on the evening of Friday 12th March, surrounded by banks of Moog and Buchla, analogue electronics, live percussion and all of it dwarfed by that gargantuan organ, it’s less about the music he’s composed and more about this shining nexus that allows him to jet out anthemic theme on top of anthemic theme.

Gelsi himself has explained that the really rather innocuous title, Ephemera, derives from all the many, seemingly inconsequential elements of his entire life that, in combination, have brought him to this point. Here he’s discovered the essence of synthetic, soundtrack joy and can unleash it with such ferocious abandon that it threatens to burn out the pleasure centres of the brain. I’m only partly joking when I tell you, I hope my own ephemera aren’t reduced to a pile of smouldering ash by the time I’m done listening to his.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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