The Sound-Image: Floating Points' Radiality

Sound and light are unique physical phenomena that tend to belie our direct tactile grasp. The ear perceives a sonic source of extended spatial distance, often of unknown source, by capturing and amplifying the vibratory waves in the air. The eye is perched at the heights of an Olympian mountain. This small organ of manifold layers might see things originating from enormous distances, even stretching time in looking millions of years into the past while gazing into the stars.

How might one touch the sharp brightness of the sun's radiation? In what way might one come to hold onto a melody that dissipates like a phantom a moment after being heard? Try to put into words the substantial quality of sound or an inkling of light's tactile sensibility.


Perhaps this refusal of strict objecthood is a reason why light and sound have both been associated with supernatural sources, and divine powers, throughout history. In Ancient Greek mythology, Prometheus robs fire from the gods and gives the gift to human beings. Take the invisible voice of a strange, omnipotent God booming awfully from the burning bush. Or further back, consider the immediate creative power of some great Being producing entities with his spoken words, stating in simple grammar for instance, "Let there be light."

Such meditations on sound and light arise from my viewing of a new Floating Points music video, Radiality, constructed under the direction of Hayden Bannochie & Alex Pissourios. Working from the title of the composition, the music video attempts to weave together a central converging point, a structural radius, where sound and image in a particularly modern context magnify sensual form.

In the beginning there was darkness. Darkness glides along melodic chords, opening its eyes into the static cut scene of an electricity tower looming over skeleton trees. A filtered burgundy orange air washes over the static. Our modern age is one of a proud Prometheus that grants us the force of electric fire to harvest the energy to warm our bodies.

The radius of such industrial fire is dynamic. It twists and turns with the rhythmic dissonance of a watery slap bass and piercing bolts of light that crash onto the screen like falling rain on a win shield. Brooding chords wither along zigzagging laser lines drenched in the smoggy haze of sunset. The electricity tower pulses synthesized swirls of burning drums, eventually broken down into its infrastructure-- the collaborating lines of twisting geometry-- bending into a vertigo of angles. Building in momentum dabbling computer signals work their way harmoniously into the dithering melody, rising and falling like spasmic breaths of air.

While sound travels in waves, light betrays such easy classification. In fact, light is the only physical phenomenon that can be measured as a wave or a particle, depending on the reflective stance of the observer. Perhaps such a dual physical make-up is what allows light to manipulate the sensual effect of music, informing the feel of vibration while making its invisibility more tangible.

In Radiality, Floating Points explores the physicality of the sonic and visual phenomena. Bass heavy synth wrangles the chest mirrored by the piercing quality of abrupt splashes of light that bother the eyes. However, the radiality of sonic-light also strives to reenchant our sterilized impressions of mechanical electricity and factory sound with the enigmatic immateriality that influenced the ancients to reflect on the supernatural. Grasping the infinite in such phantom-like phantasmagoria is an impressive, if not sublime feat.

Make sure to turn the sound UP when listening and make the screen as large as possible. This video demands full perceptual attunement.




Floating Points will release an album soon, stay tuned!