New Video: Scattered Clouds – 5xx
Hull’s post-apocalyptic romantics, Scattered Clouds, are back with a new video for their track “5xx,” and the track itself is available now on a limited edition of 100 cassettes on Boiled Records and digitally on their Bandcamp page.
The footage for the “5xx” video was taken from projections by Ottawa’s own Hard Science, whose glitchy analogue style is distinctly recognizable. The band describes the video as a “performance within a performance,” in which the video was mixed, mangled and ripped to shreds using old circuit bent video equipment (Tachyons + Vortex Decoder) and captured to on a VCR.
The video itself starts off with a loop of a dark highway distorted through the video equipment, synced perfectly to the pulsing rhythm which sounds as though it could be an audio glitch in and of itself. However, after a few seconds of what could have been a scene from Lost Highway, the instruments come in and the video switches to Jamie Kronick and Philippe Charbonneau’s performance. The mirrored images, colour transformations, and distorted video are perfect examples of how Hard Science takes viewers into his time machine and creates a world around us that is truly encompassing.
Philippe’s dark, swelling bass lines and brooding vocals command the listeners’ attention and his vocals draw us in closer into the void toward the end of the song. It ends in total chaos. Scattered Clouds continue to demonstrate their potency, demanding that listeners stay engaged much like a soundtrack to a David Lynch film.
Check out the video for ‘5xx’ below.