Montreal-based DJ and electronic artist CFCF (aka Michael Silver) has released a brand new video for "Exercise #3 (Building)" from his new Exercises EP, out now on Paper Bag Records.
Silver pulled from influences like Philip Glass, Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Borden among others, and used institutional architecture and 70's Canadiana as a framework for the release.
CFCF - Exercise #3 (Building) video
Director Adam Beck explained, "We were quite keen to do something that paired well with the future-retro images that had influenced his music. The architecture of these buildings reflected a grandly imagined future that already felt dated, as if the world never bothered to catch up to these concepts of what the future could look like. We used Lois Lowry's classic dystopian childrens novel The Giver as a point of reference. Developing a story wherein a chosen student living in a numbed, grey, world is given the ability to experience the world as it should be. View its colors, feel its warmth, and witness death. Her experience had to match the strong cathartic build of 'Buildings,' and this story, set amongst imposing brutalist architecture is the result."
Exercises shows a different side of CFCF's ever expanding palette with a series of subdued piano and synth based pieces. It has a distinctly 20th century feel. This is a change of pace for CFCF to be sure, but no less cinematic and evocative than his 2009 debut Continent. Each track here feels like an exploration of lost memories, studies in nostalgia, exercises in spatial remembrance.
"CFCF has reached a place where his next options are almost limitless." - Pitchfork
"Mike Silver weaves utopian architecture and Glassian minimalism into an atmospheric suite of songs." - The FADER
"... savor this gorgeous slice of vast, spacious electronics in all its melodious, meandering glory." - XLR8R