ATŌMI :: Little Floating Oracles — “Anemos” video premiere (Lady Blunt)

The video is a visionary drifting of symbolical elements that brings to dialogue two undefinable subjects: the time and the essence of life, like water perceived as mercury, an alchemical element, liquid metal—viscous fluid, dissolving in an almost static atmosphere, a timeless journey between darkness and the first rays of sunrise.

Opening up to the vastness of universal life

The Anemoi are minor gods that were sometimes represented as gusts of wind, and at other times were personified as winged men. The protagonist in this story is an embryonic being, with the part of the spirit played by an adult person wrapped in a thin soft fabric, sort of a sac. There is very little action, but the feeling is powerful.  The camera speed shifts very slightly at times, some of the waves are in slow motion and some are slightly speeded up, these effects connect to the music at just the right places.

The story takes place on a rocky beach, the sun is at the horizon, and the embryo stirs, you can see the striving awakening from oblivion, very slow, sometimes actually testing the sac. The gentle waves come in to reach between the smaller rocks and across the large ones. The last scene is with the sun visible, the horizon is clear, maybe a little cloudy way out there. Chiara De Maria translates this assumption through surreal and dreamlike visions, which interrupt the linear narrative by introducing and interweaving layers not directly related to the perception of the narrative that defines the nativity theme, striving not to define it from an anthropocentric view but opening up to the vastness of universal life in all its many facets and contradictions.

“Anemos” (puff/wind in Greek) Dir. by Chiara De Maria

From the first LP by ATŌMI, with the title Little Floating Oracles, the 7-tracks album created by Berlin based producer and sound artist ATŌMI. The project was inspired by the concept of the fetus, perceived as a physical incarnation of the cosmic essence which embodies the endless knowledge of an Oracle. The track “Anemos” was released on October 7th 2022, from Lady Blunt Records. “Anemos” is a pure, immaculate soundscape that brings about a cosmic state of stillness,  symbolically unfolding on the beach. The fetus has a somnambulant awareness in the maternal placenta. Assuming that the end is nothing but a new beginning and the conclusion of the album reflects its starting point; long breaths pulse life into a new essence. New life is sometimes strange to see.

The video is a visionary drifting of symbolical elements that brings to dialogue two undefinable subjects: the time and the essence of life, like water perceived as mercury, an alchemical element, liquid metal—viscous fluid, dissolving in an almost static atmosphere, a timeless journey between darkness and the first rays of sunrise. As ATŌMI translated into sound the beauty and power of this assumption, recreating the atmospheres and going deeper into the various ancestral states of a new life in formation, Chiara De Maria transferred the vibrational plane into a visual journey.

The breath sounds find in the rustles of waves their counterpart as if they were the breaths of the solid rock or the whole Earth. The continuous exchange between movement and state of stillness, contributes to the detachment from the concept of “harmonic life,” introducing a drop of unpredictability, belonging to the impossibility to fully understand the dynamics of life.

Little Floating Oracles is available on Lady Blunt. [Bandcamp]