Watch a 16 minute concept film of tracks from Joy In Fear, the 2023 album by Japanese rockers goat (jp)
Joy In Fear is a concept film comprising four tracks from goat (jp)’s 2023 album of the same name. The tracks featured are “Hereafter” and excerpts from “III I IIII III”, “Modal Flower” and “Cold Heat”.
Originating from Osaka, both Koshiro Hino, the founder of the group, and the film’s director Yusuke Ishida, have known each other for many years. After Ishida moved to Tokyo, the two remained friends, and upon the release of the Joy In Fear album Hino approached Ishida with the idea of making a film that would attempt to emulate the emotional states of experiencing goat (jp)’s revered live performances.
Hino states: “In a live setting time and space is shared so it’s comparatively easier to achieve immersion. Recorded works do not translate to all listeners as there is more room to be selective.”
Ishida was given complete creative control over the project and explains: “Experiencing the culmination of goat’s rhythmic elements shifting ever so slightly within the repetitive beat, creates a strange feeling that time is being stretched and simultaneously compressed to its extremities. Entering this distorted sense of time, one falls into a peculiar sensation. Such sensations are felt in moments of the extraordinary. Moments of suffering or moments of great happiness.
“This video is a collection of those extreme moments, conceived with a specific focus on the continuous cycle of suppression and release. It includes scenarios of suppression from collective consciousness and the escape from it, as well as physical suppression and escape. The specific editing techniques and visual style were chosen to increase immersion and further mess with the viewers’ sense of time.”
After seeing the completed film for the first time, Hino commented: “The work seemingly bends time. The pace increases as the visuals slow down. It repeats. Time changes and leaps. A fleeting moment somehow lingers. There is repeated exhaustion and a liberation of the body and mind. My sense of time after watching it seemed different too. It makes me want to listen to Joy in Fear once again.”
goat (jp) were interviewed in The Wire 474. Subscribers can read the article in the magazine’s online library.
