Canadian psych-folk/darkwave artist Ora Cogan is set to release her new LP ‘Bells in the Ruins’ on 13 July on Prism Tongue Records. Accompanying the announcement is her first album track video for Sleep.
The video was made by Natasha Lavdovsky who also did the album cover art. Lavdovsky’s creations cover sculpture, photography and film with time, seasonality and the force of nature strongly influencing her work and even in this video, which was sourced from her experimental performance series titled Primordial Safety Tests, has all those elements at play.
The video was shot in 2019 on the shores of Haida Gwaii and on her website Cogan offers a brilliant insight into its making, as well as the lengths Lavdovsky went to in its making. She explains how it “contrasts our struggle for safety with the peacefulness of surrender.” She adds “Lavdovsky utilizes the trope of the post-apocalyptic figure alone in the landscape to highlight the precariousness of human life on earth in the face of environmental destruction, climate change, and sea level rise. On a carefully chosen day (according to the moon phase and tidal flux), with the help of one assistant working the camera, Lavdovsky stood in the ocean for 90 minutes, allowing the tide to rise over her body. After this, she spent the rest of the day alone, filming herself floating and struggling to climb onto a rock. Beyond themes of apocalypse and survival, this video is about the strong human desire to be reunited with nature, and the peace one can find when we stop fighting for control, and just be in the moment. Floating on the edge of the ocean’s vast silence is both alien and familiar. Being held in the ocean’s soft embrace is like returning to our primordial home, and reminds us that we are always somewhere between birth, and death.”
The album is described as a stunning, ethereal body of work that touches on loss, absence and relationships. We look forward to sharing more on it soon.
You can pre-order Bells in the Ruins here: https://oracogan.bandcamp.com/