Sonarpilot – City in the Sky [The Mirage Project #1] (Video)

SONARPILOT PRESENTS – THE MIRAGE PROJECT

A collection of six stunning fractal films with bespoke electronic soundtracks, appearing monthly online from May to December 2020 at: www.themirageproject.com

The Mirage Project is a series of six short films that explore a strange parallel universe of hypnotic beauty.

The movies, each eight to ten minutes long, dive into different worlds, ranging from futuristic cities to deserted machine planets. All of the journeys circle around fundamental human questions: What is our place in the cosmos? What promises and threats does our future hold?

The videos and their soundtrack have been created by Swiss electronic musician Sonarpilot in cooperation with film producer Roger Mäder. “Electronic music has a long history of using visuals as a background on the dancefloor or at live events.

Usually this content is more of a by-product, poorly produced and not something you’d really want to look at”, explains Michael Moppert, the creative head Sonarpilot. “We wanted to craft something more: An immersive experience with visuals that are equally well crafted as the music.”

The whole production took 18 months. “We were working on the music and the visuals in parallel, to make sure that both elements support each other in an optimal way,” explains Michael. The process was a real challenge: “We were using software that generates highly complex fractals.

Some of the formulas took a week to render one minute of video,” Roger explains. Once the visual raw material for a world was generated, Michael started to edit the video and, at the same time, write the music. “It was our vision to create something like the concept albums of the 1970’s”, says Michael.

“I grew up with these beautiful records, with artwork and music that supported each other. We wanted to do something similar, using today’s digital technology”. The result are six different journeys into strange worlds, carefully edited and arranged with a soundtrack that matches perfectly.

The first video ‘City In The Sky’ appearing online at www.themirageproject.com. Subsequent mirage videos will be released monthly from July, through to December.

Each mirage’s soundtrack will also be simultaneously released as a single, available via Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and all leading digital music platforms.

Reviewed by Nagamag on July 5, 2020