BREAK Music Video for Hil Jaeger
June 14, 2017“I would never hurt you,” is what we say in the wave of love when our nerve endings are braided together, when our motion is synchronous, when our bodies are inseparable… And then the wave breaks.
LOS ANGELES, CA — Electronic producer, vocalist, composer and engineer Hil Jaeger, in collaboration with independent audio/visual art collective Unraveled Artists, brings to you an unconventional music video for her newest single Break. Conceived by Creative Director Farida Amar, filmed by Cinematographer Viktoria Raykova, and edited by Jaeger herself; this visual experiment documents tension and release in subtle nonverbal communication between Jaeger and performance artist Kira Preston as they explore the phenomenon and intimately familiar emotional entanglement of heartbreak.
Break opens in medias res within a relationship narrative, intentionally positioning the viewer as voyeur into an improvisational process of lovers probing the seemingly infinite facets of their connection with subtle choreography. Mirrors paired with congruent flesh tones and slippery, synchronous motion creates sensations of endless recursion; the camera focuses and blurs. The push and pull dynamic of infatuated lovers devolves and a quiet violence ensues. Jaeger’s emotive tenor emphasizes this as the scenes of her performance become increasingly wrought and writhing while the scenes between the two lovers remain coolly lit and methodically articulated. This breakdown will seem familiar to anyone who has ever felt love slip between their fingers. The one we love stays the same, but suddenly we start to see them differently. We push and find there is no longer a response. The magnitude we once carried effortlessly now becomes an unbearable weight.
Break began in an apartment in Brooklyn with female musician Jaeger and her aerialist love/r, where they recorded their friend playing extended technique harp. Samples of that recording became the ghost that haunts the corridors of this song. With a bleeding heart, Hil carried Break back to Oakland where she built and mastered the song in her home studio beat by beat. The visualization of this journey was filmed at Everybody Los Angeles, a queer friendly health and wellness facility, by four queer identifying women who fearlessly confront love in its various formats. Break is now being brought to you with love, perhaps the most powerful challenge we can overcome.
SONG : B R E A K / ALBUM : CMPRSSN / MUSIC PRODUCTION, RECORDING, MIXING, PERFORMANCE & VIDEO EDITING : Hil Jaeger / BODY PERFORMANCE : Kira Preston / CREATIVE DIRECTION, PRODUCTION & STILL IMAGES : Farida Amar / CAMERA OPERATION, CINEMATOGRAPHY : Viktoria Raykova / LOCATION : Everybody, Los Angeles