AIR LIQUIDE

Shimmering black-and-white shots of swaying branches are superimposed on porous Super 8 images of an endless highway. A harsh light engulfs the images. Backlit silhouettes dance in slow motion until the circling disco ball transforms into a rotating water sprinkler and the moving lights above the dance floor suddenly shine like a blazing sun over the highway.

Lotte Schreiber’s music video for “Air Liquide” from Innode’s current album GRAIN (Editions Mego 2024) floats along in a mode in which the images constantly intertwine. Passing highway bridges branch off then lead to deserted basketball courts; the spray of the ocean waves disintegrates over the hands playing drums.

The grainy texture of the Super 8 footage binds together disparate places and times: the view through the windshield of the streets of Los Angeles in 1996, geological formations, a dance floor, a rehearsal room – all these fleeting memory images interconnect.

Schreiber repeatedly finds visual equivalents for the sounds in the montage, creating synchronized effects between image and sound. As the synths increase their tempo and the hypnotically rhythmic sound becomes more disruptive, the rotor blades of a helicopter flutter to the same beat, and the stability of the camera begins to waver. A high, sustained tone complements the composition and helps direct the gaze to the elongated lines of the highway guardrails.

The music of Innode – Bernhard Breuer, Steven Hess, and Stefan Németh – follows a principle of superimposition: layers of sound are laid on top of each other, and the process itself becomes the compositional center. Schreiber’s montage translates this principle into images that constantly reorganize themselves: recurring elements are restructured, and seemingly disparate elements are associatively connected.

When the dense sound architecture finally fades into a distant, dull, pattering sound composition, the images also lose their contours as they become shadowy, change their state of matter, and liquefy. (Charlie Bendisch)

Translation: John Wojtowicz