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Savages music video melts rock into ambient noise by recording it again and again

Savages music video melts rock into ambient noise by recording it again and again

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savages band
savages band

Savages' songs are usually dark, biting, post-punk jams, but their latest music video destroys almost all of that. The band has taken one of its tracks, "I Am Here," and warped it into an unrecognizable shrill of sounds by re-recording it from an existing recording, and then repeating that process nine more times over. The result sounds like an electronic symphony of crying cicadas that groans and lurches as the song moves on. Part of the warped recording is used to preface the band's performance in their new video, while other elements of it have been blended into the background of the song's regularly stark track.

The video was produced by Pitchfork.tv, which says its inspiration came from a piece by composer Alvin Lucier. In 1969, Lucier used the same technique for a composition called "I Am Sitting in a Room," which quickly turned what was originally a vocal recording into a wobbling mass of echoed sound. Savages says that this is the first time Lucier's technique has been applied to music. "We used the band's performance to reveal the hidden resonant frequencies of the performance space," the video's director, Joshua Zucker-Pluda, tells Pitchfork. "The process itself is a direct interaction with the environment ... like we were summoning the sound from deep within the walls."