Musical Complement

In Ted Mills’ short, beguiling and funny film “nowhereland,” a character in some unspecified post-Orwellian zone wanders about a bleak quasi-sci-fi landscape. He and his co-workers exist in a bunker-like area, fiddling with equipment both retro and futuristic, dominated by a tyrannical overlord whose logo is a pug with a pipe.

We are led into a haunting and sometimes goofy cascade of images, with recurring shots of an ominous hallway, ambiguous satellite dishes and throbbing polka dots.

Into our hero’s drab gas-masked existence, a woman appears, luring him away from his duties and, indeed, the social order of things (echoing the theme of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film “Brazil”).

An independent filmmaker from Santa Barbara who has a few projects to his credit, Mills shot the 30-minute film in black and white and without synchronous sound, on Super-8 and video, but with a visual care and atmospheric starkness that recalls David Lynch’s 1977 “Eraserhead.”

Mills had finished this unique film last year, but what he lacked was the right soundtrack. It had to be something suitably strange and experimental, with hints of humor.

Enter Jeff Kaiser of Ventura, the perfect candidate for the gig. Kaiser, long a champion of making and promoting new music, has been very active of late. Add this soundtrack to the list.

It’s a testament to the strength of the music that listening to the soundtrack without visuals conjures up its own kind of abstract cinematic world.

Using mostly trumpet and electronics, with the help of longtime ally Jim Connolly on acoustic bass, Kaiser basically followed his aesthetic heart in the process. He relies on improvisation and texture-building strategies to create a complementary score. Roy and Daphne Jones add ethereal vocal parts on the bittersweet theme, a tender moment before the noisy aural storm of the coda. It’s all in an experimentalist day’s work.

The finished film’s premiere will take place at the Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara, and a limited-edition run of the soundtrack--with accompanying booklet-- will be available on Kaiser’s growing new music label, pfMentum.

For Internet-friendly curiosity-seekers, Kaiser will make the music available free on MP3.com around the time of the premiere in September. Who knows? Maybe it will even wind up on Napster, if it’s still around by then.

In other pfMentum news, Kaiser recently released a strong, definitively free-wheeling duet with guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante called “Pith Balls and Inclined Planes.” The pair explore varied terrain, calling successfully on the muse of free improvisation, from a generally nonidiomatic perspective. In other words, don’t expect much that sounds like jazz here (although there are wisps of swing phrases on “Puny Demigods on Stilts”).

Diaz-Infante is a composer and performer with an instinctive way of creating “sound paintings” that stress mood and feelings. His atonal adventures here sometimes recall the work of British free guitar icon Derek Bailey, while Kaiser’s trumpet gestures often achieve a kind of mumbling eloquence, as on “‘Fearful of Contagion” and “Outside: Three Tennis Courts.”

Kaiser also shows his refined skill with computer-manipulated electronic sounds, as on the mesmerizing piece “Once (and It Was Not Yesterday),” dedicated to the late great Conlon Nancarrow. For several decades, Nancarrow, exiled to Mexico City, created wild etudes for player piano, unplayable by humans. Kaiser pays tribute with a similar effect derived with the help of his computer, with rapid skittering lines over a drone.

The CD is another good example of the pfMentum label’s mandate, mostly about engaging improvisational statements, or otherwise pushing the envelope of musical possibilities.

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DETAILS

“nowhereland,” premiering at Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara on Sept. 13 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5.; 966-5373 www.stekki.com.