After a six year hiatus, Atlanta’s Richard Devine recently returned with new album Sort/Lave on Venetian Snares’ label Timesig, another strong release in a long line of Autechresque flashcore gems. Today we premiere the video for album closer “Takara,” more ambient lullaby than glitch freakout, set to beautiful moving images shot and directed by filmmaker Sean Curtis Patrick.
As Devine explains, “Takara” means ‘treasure’ or ‘jewel’ in Japanese. Grabbing the low-hanging fruit is the easiest, and I’m all about ease, so let me tell ya: this track is indeed a treasure and a jewel, more melodic and reminscent of BoC than most of Devine’s output, yet no less captivating and mysterious. It builds patiently and peacefully until the skittering drums kick in around the 2 minute mark, at which point Patrick’s video - largely shot in Japan while touring with his own musical project Assembler/Responder by “poetic coincidence” - shifts from gorgeous macro shots of nature unfolding in brilliant light to jittery abstractions of the urban cityscape, perfectly suiting the song’s structure.
Those nature macros are particularly moving; watching this video feels like witnessing creation itself, seeing for the first time that tiny drops of dew on blades of grass contain entire universes. Of course, with creation comes destruction, a fact not lost on Patrick. “One thing I love about Richard’s music is that it makes me dream up visuals,” he says. “I imagined this beautiful, green system: Organic, yet highly geometric, slowly being infected by a digital contagion. The host of nature being infected by the virus of the city and the interaction that ensues.”
That interaction feels symbiotic here, even if it contains the hint of collapse. In that sense these shots are the perfect visual accompaniment for the track, as if they themselves are part of the sounds.
Watch “Takara” below, and head to Devine’s Bandcamp to buy a copy of Sort/Lave. For more of Sean Curtis Patrick’s work, visit his website.
More about: Richard Devine
