So often in movies, flashbacks and memory scenes are shot in black and white; it adds a somewhat timeless effect to the images. So when warped visual effects and experimental camera techniques are added to the mix, the result can feel something like an alternate reality. In this sense, psychgaze outfit Vaureen’s visual accompaniment for “Before The Rectangles Take Over,” off last year’s Violence EP, is an enduring, yet trippy depiction of a band’s experience, and their remembrance of things past. The video, directed by the band’s own Andrea Horne, is an amalgamation of live playing, individual closeups, and travel, all with a twist. As opening chords are struck and reverb rings, unmoving, we see faces come in and out of focus. Meet the band. And then, as though the stepping of a distortion pedal affects our perception, the images blur and mirror and double and become masks of themselves and….
The full band emerges into the song; the drumming steadies and a molasses-like rhythm is established as the visuals start to strobe. The camera cuts somewhat hectically and the mask-faces go from peaceful to agitated, as though shedding light on the creative struggle. It’s not some cakewalk to make art, they’ll have you know. It’s tireless and discouraging and feelings are involved, and sanities are questioned, they’ll have you know. From here, a whirring time lapse of travel ensues, presumable from one tour or another. They take us, at first in a car, through cities and highways, deserts and plains and mountains. It’s beautiful, yes, but you might imagine the toll such an extensive road trip may have on you, physically, mentally, emotionally. The video starts its descent as images of the band playing dissolve in and flicker over the ascent of an airplane. The ground grows increasingly distant as Horne and Marianne Do’s vocal harmonies beautifully profess, “no sleep until it’s over.” You get it now?
