I know I’m late… and it’s not even finished. But let me post this anyway.
In 2008 the British-Romanian Filmmaker Robert Popescu set out to shoot the first documentary film of one of history’s most debated and mysterious companies: the Metronomic Society.
When they first appeared in 1983, they were unanimously praised as being great innovators and visionaries. Indeed they conceptualized the first self-improvement method, a topic which went mainstream only a few years ago. The society offered various types of courses and workshops to help businessmen and managers to be more organized and achieve more, in less time. The basic idea behind the Metronomic Society’s approach to productivity was that everybody had an inner rhythm – their “inner metronome”, as they called it – and that by syncing to that rhythm you could be in a constant flow of productivity. You’d never get tired, distracted, unfocused.
As time went by, the structure became increasingly similar to a cult, with a preoccupying tendency to “lock in” people, getting them to go from one improvement course to the next, putting huge pressure on those who wanted to get out. A couple of years later 3 dead bodies were found after one of the Metronomic’s courses and Albert Marchand, the founder of the society disappeared.
An investigation on the matter uncovered several possible ties to secret societies, the Vatican and the Sicilian Mafia, but nothing was ever proven.
Interestingly Robert Popescu’s film was never finished. I started to work on a soundtrack for the film… but only ever produced this short sketch… it’s as if unproductivity would strike anybody who’d attempt to dig deeper into the history of the society, as if they could dismantle your inner rhythm and take you to a path of failure.
Technical notes: this short musical sketch is mostly made with fragments of field recordings (clocks, skipping vinyls, alarm clock beeps, old printers, etc.), looped and arranged in Ableton Live.
https://soundcloud.com/papernoise/0267-metronomic-society
