The latest video from DJ and producer Bassnectar is one of the most visually arresting works to come out this year. The short film for the song "Reaching Out," directed by David Dutton, features dancer Barbara Woortman as she emerges from a gelatinous cocoon and floats through the air, defying gravity in a cavernous abandoned cathedral. "This song is about human connection," Bassnectar (a.k.a. Lorin Ashton) tells NPR Music in an email. "But [it's] also about our personal journeys and how they intersect in cathartic and beautiful ways in a kind of metamorphosis."
Although the song is an instrumental, the lyrical narrative is implied. "As the song progresses," Bassnectar writes, "the voice says, 'We're reaching out to set you free,' as if she is being contacted from beyond her current state of awareness. The voice represents an angel, which could be a friend or just an entity of healing. When she bursts through the cocoon, she is set free to move and dance across the same terrain which she was once submerged in. The new control and mastery of her body follows her as she moves forward into life, leaving trails of her experiences behind her."
"Reaching Out" is the opening cut to Bassnectar's latest album, Unlimited. He wrote the album after spending much of the past year disconnected from the Internet and social media. He's calling it his deepest work to date. It's due out June 17 on Amorphous Music, and features collaborations with The Glitch Mob, Rye Rye, Zion I and more.
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