Over a period of 49 minutes, the bird’s eye camera follows three silhouetted figures in a snowy paddock, their actions structured by an unknown choreography – attempting, deviating, instating, rejecting, adapting. True to the static nature of ambient film, there is no overall plot or narrative, and there is no perceivable character development; instead, the figures’ movements are repeated, reversed, mirrored, doubled, inverted, sped up, slowed down, coloured, extracted. The accompanying soundtrack (available on Bandcamp) is based on a constantly undulating filter drone that is at times embellished with rhythms and textures but essentially stays true to its cyclical nature for the duration of the film.
In the context of Contag’s SLEEPYTIME series, THE TWILIGHT DRONE is a consequent step towards the sedative and meditative minimalism he has been exploring already – where less really is more. While the pieces on the previous albums varied between five and twenty-five minutes in length, this is an uninterrupted album-length drone piece that works not only as soundtrack but also as an ambient work in its own right. It is this which really sustains the film’s non-developmental structure, creating a broad arc of dynamics that holds the viewer until the end.