Gerry Franke

Ulam Spiral

Gerry Franke - Ulam Spiral

A collection of bedroom-engineered rhythms, psyched out slow jams and 4-dimensional steppers by GF. Very low business risk. Brought to you by Max & Can.

Fictional Background:

The cinematic vision of an unfinished short film project entitled ULAM SPIRAL served as the main inspiration for the score composed by Gerry Franke.

Farcically over-dimensioned, the film was impossible to realise from a financial and practical perspective - a psychedelic blast of visual concepts, that lead to the
unique narration style in which Franke tells an exotic story of death, a madness created by obstinacy, intrigue and coincidental creation.

In 1963 Stanislaw Marcin Ulam (1909-1984) discovered a remarkable spiral formation while sketching with numbers during a mathematic lesson. He drew the natural numbers starting with 1, continuing in a left spiral and highlighting all prime
numbers. Soon an unexpected pattern emerged from the sketch: The Ulam Spiral.

An unexperienced director, who everyone referred to only as "Stab", was determined to realize an optical idea that alledgedly came to him while being on a trip to Jordan
reading about Ulam and his spiral discovery, which initiated ideas of the connection between regularity and coincidence in Stab's mind eventually leading to the abstract script for the short film in 1993.

When Franke was approached by Stab to compose the score of the film, he loved the wild imagery and the complex themes and decided to record music for ULAM SPIRAL in early 1995. A few months later Stab disappeared and Franke took a break from producing the soundtrack to focus on his band.

In 1998 Stab reappeared with new ideas and convinced Franke to proceed with the score for the film, only to vanish again a couple of weeks later. Fed up with the inconsistency of the project, Franke decided to finish the soundtrack for his own
listening pleasure in 2001 and kept it a secret - until today.

12inch Tax Free Records: TAX12005
Also available @ D\G\T\L