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onlyhiddenremains-blog · 5 years

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Music Visuals & Their Qualities

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Note: In the spirit of the new year and doing things differently, I've decided to openly discuss my opinions and thoughts as such, as opposed to trying to make some point or fact of the things I say or discuss. With that out of the way I wanna talk about Music Visuals.

What Makes A Visual?

A Visual is generally a well edited, supplemental aesthetic piece to a song, when done correctly. I think what makes a Visual a truly effective and unique addition to a song is how the visual builds either a feeling or provides a unique interpretation to enhance one's listening experience, with the basis being the song that goes with the visual. To put it shortly, what makes a Visual good is how well the direction of the video can synergize with a song. Below I'll be talking a bit about some of my favorite visuals, and how I think they've set a standard of qualities to look into when watching a Visual.

1 - Melancholic & Trippy

Hidden Behind Leaves video for 'Paixao' by Dylan Ross is a key example in showing how a Visual can not only be incredibly abstract, but also help to further capture the sort of archaic, witchy, and melancholic tone the song itself exudes. It's a visually psychedelic, yet somber video all around, and there's few, if even any video in general that has done it quite like Hidden Behind Leaves has with this particular video.

2 - Wavy & Beautiful

Tobi Visuals video for 'Mute City' by DPRT highlighted and in a sense encapsulated what vaporwave was, aesthetically speaking. Smooth editing, Purple filtering, Japanese commercials, beautiful women, and a ton of fucking water everywhere was were set as defining factors in the genre and subculture, for me anyway. While Mute City wasn't a vaporwave track, the visual for it certainly is, and it's amazing to see all the previous elements play off together with the song.

3 - VHS Quality/Nostalgia factors

Nostalgia can sometimes be a nice thing to revisit, especially with music. One thing that struck me about Kigetsu Yens visual for 'Lyrical Combat' by TwistKid was how natural and smooth Twist's song ran with old clips of MTV shows, skating videos, and old basketball footage. The footage itself, some 20 or 30 years old even, really redefined the feel of Twist's song. As much as it's about spitting bars, when both video and song are together, Twist's song became a part of that nostalgia, like he wasn't from this time, and it's pretty amazing that a video helped to do that. It's honestly cool for Kigetsu to have chosen videos of lower quality considering that at the time HD wasn't a thing, and I honestly don't mind that, the nostalgia comes from the grainy footage, in my opinion.

Closing Thoughts

There's a lot more to Visuals than just fancy edits and elements that correspond to aesthetics, and maybe that's hard to think of at face value. Nonetheless, and despite narrow windows of time and staying awake, I enjoyed trying to articulate what I think makes for good visuals. I can't stress that it's only an opinion, since I'm honestly no critic, and amateur in a lot of places, but if this gave any new insight to someone, then I guess I'll have done a good job. Feedbacks always appreciated, and thanks for reading.

Links

Kigetsu Yen: Twitter / Youtube

TwistKid: Twitter / SoundCloud

Tobi Visuals: Twitter / Youtube

dprt: SoundCloud

Hidden Behind Leaves: Twitter / Youtube

Dylan Ross: Twitter / SoundCloud

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