We’re excited to be premiering Ata ‘Sote’ Ebtekar’s new video for his track Life, made by audiovisual artist Tarik Barri.
The Iranian-American composer’s latest album, Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran, deals in intricately detailed sonic maximalism. Think richly textured and vivid electronics and immersive soundscapes. The third track from the new record, entitled Life, comprises layers of complex electronic composition woven together with a playful synthesis. Barri’s vibrant digital visuals, which we’re premiering exclusively today, make for a suitably hypnotic accompaniment.
Speaking on the album, Sote said: “Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran is an all electronic affair, harmonically maximalist, predominantly symphonic-synthetic, requiring active listening. The making of this album was intentionally a very personal process, going into self-therapy territory at times, dealing with tolerance, destruction, compassion, misery, grace and tyranny in an auditory manner.”
Barri, whose previous work has seen him collaborate with the likes of Radiohead, Atoms for Peace and Nicolas Jaar, explained that his visuals were inspired by the track’s title. “I made the video an exploration of how small elements can combine to make bigger elements, how the microscopic gives rise to and breathes life into the macroscopic. When does something stop being an element in itself and when does it become part of a bigger whole?”
“It has something to do with relative scales, interconnecting forces and communication between particles,” he continues. “I wanted to explore this on a very intuitive level with digital visuals, with their most basic elements being pixels – zooming into them, exploring their individual properties, connecting and disconnecting them, and seeing the larger forces of life and death emerge from these processes.”
Watch the video for Life in the player above.