ALIEN COMMUNICATIONS MUSIC VIDEO
REUKO X SUBTRONICS
“A dormant otherworldly vessel from unknown origins receives a signal, and a powerful energy within is awakened.” Having had the pleasure to work with Subtronics’ live visuals team on the previous Antifractals 2023 tour, we were stoked into venture into this hyrbid-genre 5-minute dubstep journey to explore chaotic, extraterrestrial dimensions.
When we started on Alien Communications, the Creative Director (Ray Elemento) and I were diving into moodboards that Subtronics (Jesse Kardon) put together while he was producing the music for the new album (TESSERACT). By a strange convenience, we found one of my previous NFT artworks were referenced in the mood boards, so that kickstarted the world we set out to explore and expand on.
OFFWORLD NFT collection by Reuko referenced by Subtronics
The muted color palettes of the planet’s desolate landscapes and atmosphere really hit the vibe we were looking for, and the iridescent highlights and turbulent particle swarms were a perfect match for the heavy tone of the music.
We branched off the narrative from the original inspiration of the NFT artwork, and let the face-melting dubstep soundtrack guide us down a rabbit hole of cosmic psychedelic textures, aggressive and tightly synced particle choreography, and a range of shattered landscapes from a world beyond reality.
One of the challenges was finding a way to transition between the many different shots seamlessly, while keeping up with the pacing in the music. We thought about this vessel being of a quantum entity in its nature, teleporting and simultaneously existing in many locations at any given time. From there, giving it a gateway/corridor in its structure that we traverse through allowed us to fluidly transition between almost any shot.
The narrative core we settled on became a flexible canvas of cosmic rage; An ominous pyramid vessel receives a signal, and chaotic energy erupts in every direction as it traverses the realm in search of the source.
It was also important that the visuals made for the music video would translate well to a live music setting. We carefully structured moments of building energy and tension up to a climax, with a high-energy chaotic release to elevate the live experience.
