“The production is completely immersive. Every nuance, every texture, seems to respond to a different emotional state: confusion, hope, anxiety, resilience. And yes, it feels like a generational conversation in musical form.”
— Oliver Zurita, Expansión Radial
“I hope people watch and feel both the gravity and hope we poured into this piece.”
— Sidney Cullinan, 2025 Alive Director
This Mental Health Awareness Month I release a multigenerational multimedia collaboration I hope you’ll find cathartic: 2025 Alive. The streaming soundtrack is a high-tech improvisation by me and my daughter Riley Max, and the film is a cinematic fantasia by my daughter Sidney Cullinan. They express the myriad of thoughts and feelings we’ve had during this unconventional cultural year that, regardless of where you stand… feels like a test of some sort. A test of new ideas. Of old ideas in a modern world. Of stamina. Willpower. Intellect. Empathy. Patriotism.
2025 Alive has vocals throughout but only one lyric: “Test.” This word is immediately deconstructed and splintered into pieces, like so much in our modern world. Whether current events are testing your resolve in a culture you loved, or you support those who are testing just how far we can break or reform our norms, this premise is apropos of what you are experiencing in 2025.*
We hope you find our work meaningful in this amazing and overwhelming year to be alive.
Composer & Instrumental/Vocal Improvisor/Performer: Cory Cullinan
Vocal Improvisor/Performer & Cover Art: Riley Max
Director, Editor & Short Film Writer/Creator: Sidney Cullinan
Produced by Cory Cullinan
Our Unconventional Purpose & Process
“I hope listeners can find something in 2025 Alive that makes them feel grateful and hopeful and happy and sad and angry and tired and a little excited too. Or maybe just one of those.”
— Riley Max, 2025 Alive Singer / Illustrator
Like many Americans at the start of 2025, I was feeling physically, intellectually and emotionally exhausted. So much so that I actually felt sick. For the first time in a long time. I saw doctors, consulted a therapist, talked to friends and family… and learned a lot of us were feeling the same way. That’s when I realized body and mind doctors had nothing to fix in me. I just needed to express what was within: in art, music, film. Sometimes words fall short.**
I went down in my studio and noticed I had my whole live rig set up for Doctor Noize show rehearsals. But, honestly, I didn’t want to rehearse my kids’ show. I was feeling something else. I spent five minutes setting up a few instrument channels in Ableton Live with some of the most darkly beautiful effects imaginable — on guitar, keytar, sax, percussion, even voice — and decided I was going to improvise what I was feeling. The soundscape of 2025 Alive is what came out.
I looped instruments one by one without rehearsal. I’d record one instrument, put it down, pick up another instrument, and start loop recording it, without breaks. The loops last different durations, so the piece evolved underneath me like a monster I only partially created, and with each new instrument I’d respond to what I heard, which were things I’d played but not entirely organized or created. It felt very apropos to what life feels like right now — semi-controlled, semi-chaotic.
I immediately felt a sense of release and calm. It resonated with what I felt more than any words I had been able to articulate. But I also knew I wanted the voice of the younger generation enhancing it. When Riley came home from Harvard, I asked her to improvise vocals over whatever this was I’d created, with the same rule: No rehearsal and no editing after. She sang over the soundscape on a wireless mic, and I played my Roland HandSonic percussion instrument — an instrument I know well and love*** — both one take, no edits. And the recording was done.
I gave the audio to Sidney at UCSB, told her as best I could what had inspired me to start it, and said: “Do whatever you feel when you hear this.” She asked if it should be abstract, artful, or commentary… I said it could be whatever. So she did whatever**** and sent me the video. When Sidney sent me the final draft, it brought me to tears. Perhaps this is because I’m now an emotional empty-nester. But I don’t think so. I think this is one of the most unique works of art I’ve ever been involved with, a collaboration of deeply connected souls in opposite parts of the country and different phases of life in 2025. But feel free to make fun of me if it’s the former.*****
Detailed Production Notes For AudioCinemaPhiles
I established purposeful creation rules for 2025 Alive. Rule #1 was no overdubs or retakes in its recording. Rule #2 was that I’d be a crap parent and give my daughters/collaborators very little instruction on what do do. And Rule #3 was that I had to use the performances as is except for mixing them with extra effects, panning and volume as desired. But no editing.******
I broke Rule #3 twice. (I’m an artist, not a scientist…*******) Once to fade Riley’s vocals in backwards leading to the big climactic section, and once to do the same with the percussion. I wanted a bigger crescendo and felt cheating was the only solution. Aside from that, 2025 Alive is live. Here is exactly how it was created:
(1) I hit record and started playing guitar with a really cool, epic avant-garde guitar sound. Roughly speaking, when I play individual notes on the guitar with this effect, they sound like notes; but when I play chords, they sound like distant rumbles or explosions, depending on how I play them. This allowed me to play the guitar both as a melodic instrument and a sound effect.
(2) I stopped recording guitar when it felt right, hit “loop,” put down the guitar, and picked up the keytar to loop a beautiful but rather melancholic chordal synth part.
(3) I put down the keytar, picked up the guitar set to a very different, more present and technological sound (but still very organically expressive), and looped that. I echoed the four-note motif I played in the first guitar part but added other things that felt right over what I heard.
(4) I put down the guitar and picked up the keytar to play it again — this time a more intense solo electronic string sound, playing strange melodies over the concoction underneath.
(5) I put down the keytar and played saxophone over the now-rather-substantial bed of music.
(6) I put down the saxophone and picked up a wireless handheld mic, singing over the instrumental loops and looping my voice with a boatload of effects on them.
(7) I picked up the guitar once more and played a more active extreme part for the climax through an effect that includes the sound of backwards tape echoes, which to me represented both where it seemed we might be going historically and also a disturbing yet beautiful apex.
(8) After this, I faded the instruments out, picked up the handheld mic again, and decided the piece needed a human voice singing something new to close it — and for some reason it felt right to sing a rather weird final vocal part based on and deconstructing the word “test.”
(9) Riley improvised a vocal part. I don’t know what to say about Riley’s artistic empathy and improvisation. You’ll hear it. Her voice and performance grounds the whole piece in a simple organic human element anyone can relate to. She does it onstage all the time.
(10) I improvised one percussion take on the Roland HandSonic — a beautiful and organic digital instrument and interface. I told myself I would change the percussion patch to something that felt right in between each perceived looping layer. This was tricky and subjective as the parts actually loop at different times. I did something on the HandSonic I find myself doing more often in my production practice: I printed permanent effects that influence how I play the instrument while recording. Specifically, I intentionally set the preamp too hot, so playing the instrument loudly made it distort a bit. It made playing the parts feel more dangerous and exciting live, with more dynamic consequences. You can really hear this at the big climax. It gives a different sound to the listener, but it also inspired me to play in a much different, and more intense, way as a player.
(11) The sound you hear in the background, fading in at the start and out at the end, is actually just the natural haunting hum of one of the guitar effects I played through. It’s actually a really quiet byproduct of the effect… But I liked it so much that I cranked it way up at the start and end.
(12) I did very little on the film except approve and respond to a few drafts. I love the sci-fi digital static effects Sidney used, to me representing the digital signal-to-noise issues present in all of our communications and ways of thinking in 2025. I love that she briefly inserts our family for a few seconds here and there, representing us as a very small part of the transpiring tapestry of life. I love that she attaches human moments to organic sounds… her film’s pacing… the moments of beauty, grandeur and community… the digital and information overload leading to something indescribable, simultaneously inspiring and numbing our hearts and minds…
(13) The cover art is by Riley, who is now a visual arts and film major in college even though she’s performing and producing music like crazy. We gave her no guidelines, which is fine ‘cause she doesn’t like to follow guidelines anyway… Sidney and I cracked up and loved the dystopian Wizard-Of-Oddness of the image she sent to represent our collaborative work as its cover.
*I’d love to receive written or artistic depictions from you that express your experience in 2025.
**But other times words allow you to express things like antidisestablishmentarianistic authoritarianism, which incidentally as far as I know is not a thing.
***I was not paid for this sincere product plug, but wish I had been. $$$
****That’s like totally a genre.
*****Or, for that matter, for any other reason.
******Rule #4 was the unspoken We Don’t Talk About Fight Club.
*******This is questionable.
To Doctor Noize Albums | To Footprint