Jana Irmert - When I Dissolve

A Closer Listen

When I Dissolve is a fitting title on multiple ongoing levels.  The album collects Jana Irmert‘s compositions for Henrike Meyer’s autobiographical documentary To Be An Extra, which is about Meyer’s attempts to be noticed in the movie industry while she films her first movie, financed by work as an “out of focus extra.”  As conveyed by Journey Into Cinema, “Meyer’s work as a background actor taught her to be nothing; to be seen but not seen, to be essential but also extraneous.”  In the movie trailer, she intones, “my contours become blurry.  I am melting.  I am becoming permeable.”  Irmert’s impressionistic music creeps around the edges, there and not-there.

But the story doesn’t end there.  The movie was screened in Berlin last March to light acclaim before virtually disappearing.  Its online presence is miniscule.  The words “to be an extra” are erased in the title of Irmert’s release, When I Dissolve.  Originally announced as a label release, the album now exists only on Irmert’s website, its presence wiped from the label’s Bandcamp page.  The movie, the director, the soundtrack artist and the score are all caught up in an unintentional disappearing act, imitating the premise of the release.

And yet, and yet … Separated from the film, Irmert’s compositions teem with an understated power.  Julie Calbert’s cover art makes an instant impression with its combination of hues, suggestion of a nest and outline of roots.  The music calls us back to a movie we haven’t seen and a director we haven’t known.  Beeps and tones surface and sink in static.  “Black Holes” sounds like a swarm of bees in the depths of space.  In the film, the music lurks in the background like an undiscovered extra.  When the visuals are excised, it surges to the foreground, mysterious and alluring.  Counter-intuitively, it becomes Irmert’s most immediate collection since FLOOD, as the music insists on being heard, synth and string announcing themselves in “A Room Breathing (The Nothing I).”

When does nothing become something?  When does no one become someone?  The implication is that noticing makes such events occur, which is why Meyer works so hard to be recognized while fearing that she is melting.  But the score – and we suspect the movie – subverts this narrative.  Meyer writes that while the music lies beneath, “there’s a whole universe” below, suggesting the manner in which many look at society’s outcasts: those barely scraping by, hoping to be seen.

“No Ground to Fall On,” heard in the second half of the trailer, is forward and foreboding, its dark chords connected to electronic crackle.  In “Foreground Action Background Noise,” Irmert makes the connections explicit, a cold wind blowing, a wild alarm sounding, a light rain falling over a single unruffled synth.  What important signals are we missing while pretending all is well?  In “Mist,” a synthesizer imitates a woodpecker; how loud must one be to win notice?

When I Dissolve presents the rare instance in which the score succeeds apart from the film, while conveying the same message.  Sometimes the subtle and understated possesses more power than the obvious and brash, and a buried story is more important than the lead.  (Richard Allen)