Men I Trust (Garage Session) | Liquid Light Visualizer

An alternative visual accompaniment for Men I Trust's "Garage Session" series using entry-level liquid light show techniques.

00:00 1. Found Me
03:04 2. Numb
06:54 3. Norton Commander
10:00 4. Say Can You Hear
13:38 5. All Night
17:56 6. Show Me How
21:45 7. Seven ( h a h a )

Liquid Light stuff! What I'm doing here is very basic. I'm using a glass bowl (harvested from a wall clock like a true blue liquid light-er) along with mineral oil, isopropyl alcohol, water and ink. Filmed up close with a camera, so not much movement is required. With a few exceptions, the color of the footage is heavily manipulated (ink was $5 a bottle).

I originally produced these visuals as a background for my local theater to use in their preshow slideshow. After finishing the set, I sat down to review it on the TV. I put on this "alternate order" playlist I made of the garage sessions from Men I Trust's Forever Live Sessions album, wanting to sit and watch all 21 minutes of the background video that I was about to send off. I ended up really enjoying the combination, so I shot a little more footage and edited this thing together.

The editing here is inspired by a recent experience. I heard that episode 1 of BBC's Planet Earth synced somewhat well with In Rainbows by Radiohead. Sitting down and watching it with some friends was really fun. Even though the majority of emotional beats didn't match up between the two, the few times it did, it was realllly satisfying. It was fun to see how to two recontextualized each other.

A great moment, in particular, was the scene of a hyena chasing an antelope which was scored by "Weird Fishes", with the depressing strings of "All I Need" entering right as the hyena ripped off the antelope's skin. It was silly, but also really interesting to feel. This album that I have listened to over and over again for years felt different. "All I Need" is certainly a sad song, but that opening never felt like such a gut punch as it did then.

I've divulged too far from what I'm trying to say– I really liked the pacing of this sync up too. It didn't always need to feel like it was perfectly in time with the music. Specific moments were great, but I was okay with not constantly being satisfied. I felt the same way listening to the garage sessions along with these separately edited videos.

While going through this, I tried to hold on these shots longer than I wanted to. A lot of the cuts are just kind of random, hopefully in an unexpected way. Because those are the moments that make you feel the music differently, and that's what I like about these visual accompaniments.




(Also, just to clarify, this is also a reordering of the session from how they've organized it on the album. This session was actually the first thing I ever heard from Men I Trust, where I was watching them on YouTube. I guess I was listening to an unofficial playlist made by a random account that had the songs in a different order. When I looked at it on Spotify and realized this, it was too late. My brain had firmly cemented how much I loved "Found Me" as an album opener. I just couldn't do it, so I made a Spotify playlist of that YouTube playlist with a few changes.)