John Lemke – To Let It Go: Video Premiere
Watch the video for To Let It Go by Glasgow composer, sound artist and electronic producer John Lemke.
The track is taken from Lemke's second full-length album Nomad Frequencies, a record inspired by a "six month odyssey" brought on by structural damage to his Glasgow studio. The album features field recordings taken during his travels alongside a litany of samples, synthesizers, piano and percussion.
To Let It Go's video was directed by filmmaker Iván Torres Hdez, whose past credits include the music video for James Yorkston's Mary Connaugh & James O'Donnell, from his 2009 album with The Big Eyes Family Players.
Explaining his treatment for To Let It Go, Hdez describes the track as "somewhere between a sci-fi landscape and an enchanted environment".
The director says: "The song captures, for me, that moment when everything is lost but there are still some remains that keep on living almost in an automatic way, resigned but still with a hint of hope. To recreate this I tried many other approaches, from using only the blown-up colours and shapes found in sci-fi movies to the abstract imaginary of whales swimming in deep waters transformed into pure lines, like technical drawings.
"Finally I remembered that a few years ago I had found some 16mm material that I ran through a projector that had a broken belt so the images were enclosed in a loop with a “falling rain” effect. I thought that was a very appropriate material for this song and captures well both the mood and the tempo. The silhouettes you can almost see and the appearance of movement encapsulates my view of what To Let It Go is."
Nomad Frequencies is out now on vinyl, CD and download via Denovali.