All images courtesy of Beacon, unless otherwise noted
The Brooklyn electronic duo Beacon released their sophomore LP, Escapements, last week on Ghostly International. Known for an experimental but welcoming form of electronic pop, the duo of Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett create both emotive dancefloor tracks like “Backbone” and loungier affairs like “Running Out” in Escapements, all bolstered by Mullarny’s melodic, breathy vocals, which cut through with reverb and other more warped sound edits. With the Will Joines-directed music video for the R&B-flavored title cut, premiering today on The Creators Project, Beacon tease the visuals that will be seen at upcoming shows.
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Before Escapements, Beacon explains that visuals were more of a collection of ideas accumulated over years of touring, rather than a unified body of work. This go around, they wanted to reboot the entire live show for the new record, which meant brand new accompanying visuals. And instead of farming it out to some 3D artist, the duo took a far more DIY approach, crafting an array of highly kinetic 3D geometries in a minimal black-and-white palette.
“We wanted to create something that felt vast, and broke the standard visual plane,” Beacon explains. “Stripping the color away allows the forms to appear to be floating in space, and creates the illusion that you’re looking into a larger expanse. By limiting the color palate to these binaries, we were able to take full advantage of the negative space.”“We’ve always thought of our visuals as being reductionist, and functioning in the same way dramatic stage lighting does,” the duo adds. “Our lights are also limited to silvers and steely greys, which allow the two elements to enmesh seamlessly during the set.”
To create the 3D motion graphics, Beacon used the Plexus program created by Rowbyte. Plexus allows users to map various renders to OBJS (a file format that contains 3D geometry information for 3D modeling programs like Maya), which exploded possibilities for the duo with its complex routing.“You can build chains of effects that can be sent to specific parameters creating really sophisticated movement,” the duo says. “The desired effect of the visuals in a live setting is to create convincing illusion of depth. You can filter settings like aperture and focal length directly through the renders, simulating believable lens effects.”
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Courtesy of philistine dsgn
The live visuals run on two computers—one dedicated to sound and the other for visuals and lighting. Both computers run Ableton and are synced over MIDI. The audio triggers from Ableton are routed to VDMX software, which acts as a master visual bank playing back clips throughout the set, and DMXIS, which runs as a plugin within Ableton to power the custom lighting design on 4 Chauvet CORE 3x3 lights.The idea of featuring these live animated visuals in Joines’ music video happened after the director saw a recent Beacon live show. All involved thought the visuals needed to be featured in a music video for the title track.
Joines, who has directed videos for Beacon, Phantogram and Com Truise in the past, wanted to highlight the live show’s striking kinetics. He also wanted to play around with what the audience doesn’t see—the “mysterious energy of their performance.”“The goal on set was to capture the feeling of controlled chaos,” Joines explains. “Throughout each shot, we were continually dislodging the lens from the camera body, which created images that morphed from focus to reveal spectral outlines of Jacob and Thomas.”
Joines says that sometimes this technique lined up perfectly with a change in the song, and other times it ruined the take. But, in his opinion, the unpredictable nature of the filming ultimately created some extremely dynamic moments, allowing he and Beacon to capture that imperfect excitement of a live performance.
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“With our live show, we’re committed to creating an experience that envelops the viewer, something that they can get lost in,” Beacon says. “It's all about discovery, not only for us as musicians and artists, but also for those on the other side of the work. Being surprised by something you didn’t expect can be a very powerful experience.”
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