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From Botch to Norma Jean, Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan; I have always had a soft spot for Metal*. Not least because its adrenaline-inducing intensity always seems to send the courtiers and courtesans of courteous society scurrying away.
Many years ago, I was therefore very pleased to discover that my neighbour at the time – Matt Wakefield – was member of a local metal band called Mia Hope.
I recorded this performance at their “We are just Satellites” album launch gig in 2010. After the same gig, I did actually make a ‘proper music video’ of their track “Filmed like a Modern Day Noir”. However, fourteen years later, I reviewed my footage of the gig and my favourite track of theirs – “50 Year Storm”. Rather than just edit together a rough, live, music video; I decided to explore the concrete intensity of the music and raw footage. I pulled the footage backwards through a digital hedge, cutting it up and looping certain riffs and passages which define the vernacular of the genre – and Rock in general.
I was always intrigued by the genre names Rock, and Metal – because they connote such elemental, concrete, materiality.
Before we – as humans – think a single thought, we are physical entities made of flesh and bone – able to see, smell, hear and feel. We exist in the physical, objective world, and interact with other physical entities – objects – from the Latin meaning – ‘thrown up in front of, or against, us’. These primal interactions and experiences – the physical contact, the touch, the colours, textures, smells and sounds – exist before a single name, word, or thought. Likewise, we can roar, scream, moan, laugh, jump, run, smash, slash, embrace – without knowing a single name or word.
The immediacy, and overwhelming sensory experience of a basement metal gig, exemplifies this pre-verbal, pre-cognitive, physical interaction – a welcome, OBJECTIVE reset in an often virtual, ideologised world. I therefore found it fitting to derive the title from that most immediate, engaging example of human play – Rock Paper Scissors.
Konrad Welz, 1 September 2024
* Technically, these bands fall under the generic umbrellas of Metalcore and/or Mathcore; however I’ll stick to the term Metal. For the record – I love a very wide range of music.