OiOi Collective has provided visuals for the release concert of new Oddarrang album Cathedral. The visuals have been designed respecting the overall look of the album and scripted to match the songs individually and as a whole.

Oddarrang – Prayer from OiOi Collective on Vimeo.

The video above is recorded from the VJ set. The song is called Prayer and it is the opening track of the new album.

So, how did we end up doing this? It was after Funky Elephant festival, when we got an email from Cartes (Centre of Art and Technology Espoo) in which they asked us to participate and provide visuals for some of the Café Louhi concerts held on this autumn. We got a list of planned concert dates and artists and were asked if some of them would be okay for us. After checking out the artists and bands, it was obvious that Oddarrang was the band we would definitely want to do visuals for!

Of course, as we don’t like to do things the ordinary way, we decided to make this a new project for us: not a typical VJ set but a scripted visual layer to support the beautiful music of Oddarrang. We took contact to Olavi, the heart and head of Oddarrang, and asked if he would be interested to collaborate with us. He turned out to be a very nice guy and was also willing to help us. He told us, that he had actually thought about having this kind of scripted visuals for the music, but didn’t know where to find people for it. What a good coincidence! So, Olavi sent us the new album and we took it to an intensive listening. After a while, we sat down together with him and told him about our visions and plans. He showed us images from the new album cover and we got a good hunch about how the visuals would support the overall look of the album. Next, it was time to start the implementation.

Because of strong cinematographic soundscape of Oddarrang, we decided to film timelapse videos of nature and sky and use them as base material for the visuals. We also filmed floating ink in water to make different organic moving shapes. Mirroring these videos in black and white gives a very powerful combination of organic chaos and symmetry.

In addition to the video material, we of course wanted to make something completely dynamic and computer generated. So, we designed a visual scene for all songs combined of video and computer generated graphics. These elements are controlled, in addition to our Midi controller, with audio tracks from each of the five instruments from the band.

During the development we also got an idea to promote our gig and the record release concert with a simple one-pager website. The video above is also a part of promoting the event and our work. Go on and check out the site at www.oioicollective.fi/oddarrang

Next up, is finalizing the visuals, doing some rehearsing with the band and then on 18th November, the real deal. We’ll see you there!

Screen capture from the Oddarrang live set