A new combination: Synchronicities brings albums and movies together

When I was a first-year, in Chase Dining Hall, I had the idea of combining spinach leaves, raisins and applesauce. 

This was met with vehement opposition and pleadings. I persisted and created the dish now known as Marsh Salad, loved the world over by my friends and fans of healthy eating.

Like Marsh Salad, there are movies and music that can be combined to result in a phenomenon known as Synchronicities — which I first learned about during an interview with Whitney Dane, the creative director at Honeysuckle Tea House. 

After an intense mac-and-cheese-fueled research session about this way to view films, this is what I found:

The most famous synchronization is called "Dark Side of the Rainbow." It pairs “The Wizard of Oz” with Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album.

It’s more than a little eerie how well the album and movie line up. From user reviews, it seems to be even more ~spooky~ when watching it under the influence of recreational drugs.

This was only the tip of the iceberg. Using "Dark Side of the Rainbow" as a starting point, I was able to unearth quite a bit more synchronicities than I ever thought I would or should.

A blog post from 2013 on the site baeble.music lists five synchronicities to try. Of the five synchronicities listed, only two piqued my interest:

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” paired with “In the Court of the Crimson King” by King Crimson.

“2001: a Space Odyssey” paired with “Echoes” from Pink Floyd’s 1971 album “Meddle.”

From the blog post, I went back to my search which led me to a reddit thread on the topic of synchronicities. The Reddit thread contained a link to a site called moviesyncs.com.

Moviesyncs.com is the literal synchronizations equivalent of the treasure Ben Gates finds in “National Treasure.” 

Based on information from the site, it seems a person named Andrew Wendland started the site in 1997 after listening to "Dark Side of the Rainbow." Since then, he and others have taken it upon themselves to discover every possible synchronicity.

There seems to be two schools of thought among those initiated in synchronicity, based on information from the site. The first is synchronicity is just a happy coincidence with no intention from the artists. The second is synchronicity was done purposefully by the artists. Wendland belongs to the second school of thought. 

The amount of possible synchronizations on Moviesync is daunting. They are organized by artist and not movie, so I’ll include the most intriguing artists with synchronizations.

There are two Rolling Stones synchronizations: The first pairs “Their Satanic Majesties Request” with “Sleeping Beauty." The second pairs “Let it Bleed” with “Bonnie and Clyde.”

The other intriguing synchronizations section was Rush. There are 11 synchronizations listed for Rush.

The two most intriguing for me were “Working Men” paired with “National Treasure” (yes, I am a Nicolas Cage fan) and “Clockwork Angels” paired with “Watchmen.”

I've only just started down this rabbit hole, but I can already tell it's one I'm going to get lost in. 

@sethpyle22

arts@dailytarheel.com