LE QUATTRO STAGIONI

The Four Seasons of the Decemberists' new album Hazards of Love were brought to life with a little help from Hornet's stable of directors in a unique one-off concert in at UCLA's Royce Hall last night.

Collaborating with Hornet and Flux the band have produced a one-off musical and visual experience - Here Come the Waves: the Hazards of Love Visualized. Responding to the album's tracks three of Hornet's directors, Peter Sluszka, Guilherme Marcondes, Santa Maria along with a fourth independent director Julia Pott, created a series of filmic treatments that were screened in sync with the band performing a full run through of the album.

The idea was spawned after the Decemberists completed their album and began thinking of an innovative way to present the new material to their fans. The idea of a live audio-visual experience developed and it was at this point that the band approached Jonathan Wells of the creative hub Flux, who then commissioned Hornet to craft the video content.

Each of the directors chose a section from the four sides of the vinyl album to work on, loosely basing the theme of their compositions on the four different seasons. The band gave the directors complete creative freedom with one exception: the director's were not allowed to create a literal interpretation of the lyrics..

As his was the first side, director Peter Sluszka's section was based on spring, beginning mysteriously in the dark and moving forward by emulating the beat of the music, finally bursting into colour and foliage and launching the film into action.

e says the challenge to create imagery that supported the story without ever becoming too literal worked naturally with his spring analogy.

"It was a chance to see a new environment grow, starting with emptiness and resolving in abundant greenery. Ultimately the mood established by the music was paramount; there was always a shadowy surreal quality to the action and the explorations through the forest always have a creepy aspect," he explains.

Sluszka says it was rewarding to develop a theme and look through varying tempos while the story developed.

"There were a lot of creative variables to balance, including the fact that the band would be performing with the footage projected."

Mercondes, tasked with the third, autumnally themed section of the film, turned to artist Andrezza Valentin for assistance. "We worked together a few times before and she helps me taking the references out of the film world, purely," he explains. "We thought of this piece as being an 'animated set design' more than a film. I wanted it to feel like the band was playing inside of that psychedelic landscape I created and the audience to be transported to that world with them."

Working with Valentin, Marcondes says they had two specific sets of references in mind while crafting their section of the film. "The first one was two eerie films I like - Kwaidan and Suspiria," he reveals. "Kwaidan is a spooky 60's Japanese film and Suspiria is from Dario Argento. Those films couldn't be more different from each other but both have a dark surreal mood, mostly achieve by a very theatrical use of the light and the sets. That look was very inspiring for me.The second reference was lo-fi computer art: simple geometric shapes, bitmap images, low poly 3D models."

Moving on to winter, Santa Maria looked to nature, and in particular forests, as their source of inspiration. "Overall the music flows very naturally and is a strange mix of beauty and sadness so we tried our best to match that with melancholy imagery," explains Josh Goodrich, one half of the directing duo. "We focused on using long exposure photography to create light streaks and a shallow depth of field, shooting still forest scenes and collage of images."

For David Hill, Goodrich's partner in crime, the project was a completely unique experience. "Most of our work is ad based, but this particular piece had a different goal altogether. It also stands out because it is a collaboration between 4 directors and we've never done anything like this before."

"This is the first time I do something for a live performance," chimes Marcondes. "It's very exciting. Nowadays you can download anything. Adding a live component to these moving images creates an special occasion again."

Check out extracts from the four segments below and see the event pictures in the gallery.