Brooklyn based post-punk band Veda Rays are premiering with us today their surreal Matt Rosenbaum directed video for the title track from their upcoming album For The Rest To Rest.
Warning this video is NSFW is your eyes are offended by lo fidelity 3D renderings of nudity.
And here is a statement on it from director Matt Rosenbaum:
“The music video for Veda Rays’ For the Rest to Rest (or, most of it) was created using a combination of still photography and an unconventional application of the open source 3D character modelling software MakeHuman. MakeHuman, as a modeling tool, is generally used to create references for artists and designers looking to develop a much more refined final rendering. It’s even used in the field of biomechanics in simulation-based testing. The program itself is ultra simplistic. A slider-based interface basically lets users adjust broad parameters of models like height, age and gender, as well as more specific parameters like head shape or finger length. The program also lets users output models with one of 31 facial expressions. To create the animations, I made use of these expressions, which are in this context not used for emoting, but rather to evoke the act of singing.
The resulting animations were then composited over photographs of rural Virginia on Christmas day in 2016, which was a total ghost town. It felt natural to show American desolation with the uncanny models. For me, the result speaks to the idea that feeling lost, isolated and confined within both habitative environments and the banal ritual of routine that can stem from them can inspire feelings of aloneness and boredom that are so potent they border full blown dehumanization.
The film was created to be from the perspective of an observer of these characters. An observer who seems to be an outsider, or not one of the characters himself. Conceptually, this is similar to found-footage style filmmaking. In the film, the observer is lured from place to place by the characters until he finds himself lost in the woods, and then inside a strange, dark shack. Perhaps resulting from the observer’s own desire to escape, he then finds himself in a vortex that eventually leads him to the ocean, which is inhabited by specters. The observer, trying to get closer and closer to the specters, is swallowed by the ocean which eventually turns into a clouded sky, the stars, and then eventually, presumably, oblivion.”
For The Rest To Rest is due out July 21st. In the meantime, you can sign up the band’s mailing list and receive their Shadow Side EP for free at VedaRays.com
Additionally, the band are having a release party at Alphaville in Brooklyn on July 21st. It’s being hosted by AdHoc and Operator Music band and Flexi are also on the bill. RSVP HERE
