The men of ZS continue their multimedia conquest of our consciousnesses with another sublime visual offering: the video clip for the title track of Diamond Terrifier (Sam Hillmer)’s The Subtle Body Casts a Shadow LP, directed by drummer/omnipotent shredder Greg Fox. At face value, the video presents a montage of ZS tour footage, focused mostly on Milan, Torino, and the Swiss Alps, with a slice of Japan thrown in. Matched with Hillmer’s sax mantras and polyphonic self-harmonization, Fox’s manipulations of the source material elevate the piece to a different plane entirely. The word “kaleidoscopic” pops up plenty in psychedelic visual circles, but the complex fractal spirals on display here set a high kaleidoscope benchmark (the passage that begins around 3:40, for example… daaaaaaamn). When television-like distortion overtakes the video’s conclusion, a robotic voice quotes 8th-century Bodhisattva Shantideva, transplanting the lament for our subconscious pursuit of misery into a modern, technology-encumbered context.
I got in touch with Greg Fox to ask about the video’s conception. He told me:
I used that video [of Hillmer performing in Marseille] to make the Mandala, which is the floating consciousness that comes in and out throughout. I was thinking about how you go through a series of events or travels or what-have-you, and throughout, no matter what the range of experience, there is always a familiar flavor to them — and that flavor is you, the filter through which you experience life as it happens around you. How one’s sadness or happiness can both have the same familiar taste, and how you identify specifically with that, more than with the other elements that are attached to it.
When I asked Fox about the technical processes through which he abstracted the video, he replied:
Magic
The Subtle Body Wears a Shadow is available now on LP and CD from Terrible Records.
• Diamond Terrifier: http://www.diamondterrifier.com
• Greg Fox: http://infinitelimbs.com
• Terrible Records: http://www.terriblerecordsus.com
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