Emptyset: Fragment from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.
Through a thick layer of electronic grunge, “Fragment,” a track from the forthcoming Emptyset album on Raster-Noton, is transformed into hard-edged analog geometries. This is analog generation from some post-apocalyptic civilization, it seems: aggressive, percussive glyphs. The machines seem … angry.
But it’s also the latest example in a long tradition at Raster-Noton of perfectly fusing visual and sonic aesthetic, so that one is the mirror of the other. And that makes it consistently more satisfying than a lot of what’s out there.
It helps that one act (the Bristol-based duo) is busily doing both.
The Wire Magazine features the video and explains some of the approach:
Watch a video for “Fragment”, a track from Emptyset’s forthcoming album on Raster-Noton.
Emptyset says: “The video mirrors Recur’s production approach, applying greater layers of detail and complexity into a signal chain, and continues from our previous moving image work exploring aspects of analogue video, broadcasting and electromagnetic induction. “Fragment” follows on from this line of research, integrating more physical processes by using reflective surfaces as a means of reshaping the transmitted image.”
Recur is released on 28 October by Raster-Noton.
Who is Emptyset?
Emptyset is a Bristol based production project formed in 2005 by James Ginzburg, director of the Multiverse studios and network of labels and the curator and electronic artist Paul Purgas. The project explores the legacy of analogue media, integrating aspects of rhythm, signal processing and spatial recording within the framework of minimalist composition. Their work interrogates the perceptual boundaries between noise and music and the potential for both technology and architecture to embed and codify themselves within sound.
Through collaborations with visual designers they have extended their work to explore the potential interactions between sound and image, reflecting upon structural film and video techniques and addressing the evolving relationship between old and new media.
at Raster-Noton