We are honoured to bring you a exclusive look at the luscious and enigmatic new video for the track ‘Memorise’ from Naarm/Melbourne multi-instrumentalist Emily Victoria.
‘Memorise’ enter the world with a massive anthemic rumble – creating an atmosphere and scope bigger than the outback and just as breathtakingly beautiful with its ambulant thundering bass and jangling guitars. Victoria’s voice is steeped with yearning and melancholy, distant and observant, coasting over the rolling instrumentation. There is a tangible pastoral timbre to the sound – baroque pop that is ethereal and stately.
Victoria says of the track:
Memorise is about time passing and the seasons changing. As we move forward , memories are distant…how consistent are visions of an event that occurred many years ago? What images are we reflecting on? And it’s also about nature following a cyclic progression. My intention was to compose a song that resembled a cycle structurally. There are no defined sections, the verse unfolds into the chorus and then the chorus concludes sooner than anticipated and the beginning of the idea surfaces again (round and round). Like a clock. Every time the cycle recommences , new paths are explored thus new lyrics, instrumental layers and additions surface. Like memories, culminating in new layers of thought, connections made, ideas appear.
The result is something that unfolds like a dream like a soft billowing blanket unfurling on a grassy slope.
The video, directed by Brendan Schoenmaker, encapsulates the rich, lush sounds with Victoria an enigmatic figure in red contrasted against a massive backdrop of natural beauty – wild, untamed and mysterious. A psychedelic interlude with a two faced entity – part Victoria, part anonymous – and analogue equipment adds a Lynchian dimension to the footage, a bizarre and unsettling intersection that adds to the enigma. The clip captures the visualisation of memory itself, with inspiration taken from photobooks as well as the work of Alexandra Savior and films A Ghost Story and Bones. Schoenmaker says:
The video explores the haunting ability of memories as well as its fleeting and corruptible nature. The concept is built off the idea that memory is constantly being rewritten with every recall leaving us with the gist of something faded.
Victoria adds:
In the clip, an individual visits some of their memories – images of them in a red dress (a lively colour resembling life), wandering lonely landscapes. The occasional appearance of a mannequin blurs the lines between individual and mannequin.
The song and video is filled with emotion and memory:
I am so in love with this song. From writing the lyrics on Chapel Street a few years ago to shooting the video clip at 5am at Emerald Beach NSW earlier this year, Memorise has taught me so much and taken me on a journey. There has been so much growth.
I can’t help but think of Nicolas Roeg’ film’s motif in ‘Don’t Look Now’ with its sense of anxiety and horror, and the blurring of lines between memory, dreams and reality:
It’s an epic, atmospheric visualisation for an epic atmospheric track.
‘Memorise’ is out tomorrow and available to stream and download through all the usual places and you can pre-save here.
Feature Photograph: Brendan Schoenmaker
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