SOULLESS CYCLE

By Mariam Jibril

L’Rain uses some unique techniques when creating the world surrounding soulless cycle, the first single off of Taja Cheek’s album Fata Morgana. Cheek does not try to hide the emotional violence of the song. Instead, the disturbing energy of the song in the video helps display the emotional violence. The video is not meant to tell a conventional story, but shows a state of being. The video is meant to show the mental state of the song, which is exhaustion, guilt, and thoughts that repeat. L’Rain is successful in experimentally showing this. The video shows a performance art video in a way the song can't. From the disturbing audio in the background to the unconnected images through fragmented video and performance, the audience gets a sense of the emotional loop the song sings about.

This video becomes something the audience has never seen before. It is more art than performance. It is Cheek’s world, or even her thoughts, brought to life. The song has drum beats and distorted guitars to describe the racing thoughts that are then complemented by unstructured, dense noise. soulless cycle creates an uncomfortable world that the video captures.

Cheek’s appearance in the video grounds the abstract in humanity with an intimate focus. Her performance mirrors the recording with an outer layer of containedness while there is aggressive energy surging underneath. The contrast between the video and the recording is critical to its effect. Cheek’s recording is almost disconnected as she sings around feelings of fatigue and self-criticism. The recording's instrumentation becomes more and more painful. That emotional contradiction is part of the performance in the video. Instead of showing great emotional pain theatrically, the video gives the pain a slow build-up to a level that feels like it could crack at any moment.

The production and editing mirror the recording’s changes in intensity, with the song going from a quiet, minimal recording to an overwhelming wall of distorted sound before it opens up space again. Sharp mirrors that intensity. The video shows an overall shift in pace that feels deliberately unsettled, but allows enough time to appreciate individual images before the video shows something else. The textures of the song andimages compliment each other. Instead of illustrating lyrics, the directing of the video translates the music into nothing but feeling. The song is about being psychologically stuck, and the video helps you to feel it.

This creative decision also places soulless cycle within L’Rain’s artistic identity. Cheek has been consistent in her practice to resist any and all attempts to put her in a box. Fata Morgana breaks this practice across rock, dancehall, experimental music, gospel, and heavy music. The video follows in this practice. Cheek’s refusal to be predictable and the attempted accessibility of her music with a visual storyline are avoided. Instead, song ambiguity and the choice for the audience to interpret what is presented are kept. Cheek’s philosophy of embracing ambiguity and distortion and refusing to resolve them is well captured in Sharp’s direction.

The soulless cycle video understands that some songs should not be visually explained; they should be experienced. Sharp’s direction of Cheek’s performance creates an adventurous visual language and keeps the surrealism emotionally grounded. The self-questioning and exhaustion of the song is captured without an easy offering of a narrative. It is an excellent introduction to an artist who uses sound and image as parallel forms of expression, and will help first-time listeners understand the complexity of Cheek’s artistic practice, while longtime fans will understand that L’Rain has once again navigated outside of predictability. Abrasive and challenging by design yet supremely compelling, Soulless Cycle is an outstanding example of what it means to be innovative.