Article Grab - The Skin of the Human Drum

In a series of articles called "The Secret History of Film", Phillip Brophy Chronicles an alternate soundtrack to modern cinema as heard through the ear of a detailed listener and expressive word-smith. I grabbed the article (again) out of an old Wire magazine I had laying around, but have happily stumbled across the entire series via his website available to read. While every article in the series is worth a read, reeling you in with titles like: "Reverberant Oscillators In Outer-Space", "Birth of the Monstrous", "Noise, Noise, Noise", and "Schizo Scherzos & Psycho Synths", the one that hit me like a bullet back in 1997 was "The Skin of the Human Drum" AKA "Violent Silences".

"The end fight of FISTS OF FURY is a symphony of bodily effects played by and upon the body of Bruce Lee - a tightly tuned and tautly toned human drum. As Godzilla becomes a magnificent mallet that strikes the skin of Tokyo with each step he takes, Bruce Lee orchestrates every move with an aural spike, inflicting pain, deflecting harm and directing energy from within his physical being."

I always dig reading peoples creative descriptions of sound and it's great when you stumble across someone who can mirror the intensity of what they're talking about when writing.