Modulations is a 1998 documentary film about the roots of electronic music and its contemporary development.

After more than three hundred interviews with musicians, theorists, technicians and scientists, Lee put together a seventy-minute film tracing the history of twentieth-century electronic music and culture. In it, she draws on the works of pioneers of artistic and musical creation such as Luigi Russolo and his manifesto The Art of Noises, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Henry and establishes their filiations with musicians operating in more contemporary – and very different – musical worlds, including the disco of Giorgio Moroder, the funky hip-hop of Afrika Bambaata and the electronic pop of Moby or Orbital.

In addition to these widely known musical figures, Lee also managed to interview members of the musical underground, in spite of their initial reticences. One of the points she makes in the film is the parallel between the collective culture created by these forms of music and the use of drugs, which differ from one period to another and influence lifestyles.

The very form of the film is adapted to its subject and quite remote from any linear, chronological montage. Modulations is constructed like a collage, or cut-up, of the interviews and recordings of concerts, performances and collective celebrations. The sound track was created by a DJ rather than a traditional sound editor, with priority given to the interaction between the images and the music. Modulations has since been extended with a collection of CDs, a book and a website [1].

Laëtitia Rouiller
Translated by Miriam Rosen

[1] Modulations, cinema for the ear, Caïpirinha Productions, 1998.