Pada tahun 2014, band Vague, yang terdiri dari Yudhis Tira, Januar Kristianto, dan Gary Hostage, dengan cepat menjadi unit band yang dikenal oleh penggemar musik independen melalui rilisan album pertamanya, Footsteps. Kombinasi musik mereka yang energetic dan lirik-lirik personal yang meratap dikemas di dalam rilisan yang berkualitas baik secara lagu individual ataupun album.
Berkolaborasi dengan Kulturo, sebuah kolektif filmmaker yang terdiri dari Riar Rizaldi dan Adythia Utama, “A Giant Blur” dari album Footsteps sekarang memiliki tampilan visual. Narasi “A Giant Blur” dimulai dengan seorang pria paruh baya yang membaca sebuah surat dari rumah sakit. Kita tidak bisa melihat apakah isi surat itu, dan apakah atau tidak surat itu berisi berita baik atau buruk, pria ini berikutnya menyetir mobilnya di kota Jakarta tampaknya tanpa tujuan. Kadang berhenti di McDonald, dan merokok di sebuah lapangan parkir, ekspresi muka pria ini seperti sedang berkontemplasi mengenai konsekuensi isi surat dari rumah sakit. Visual yang menemani naratif pria ini pun bernuansa kontemplatif, dengan gambar yang semakin lama semakin samar.
Video musik “A Giant Blur” di sutradarai dan edit oleh Riar Rizaldi.
Berikut adalah esai oleh Dwiputri Pertiwi mengenai “A Giant Blur”, dan untuk mengenal band Vague lebih baik silahkan ke Facebook page-nya.
A Giant Blur – by Dwiputri Pertiwi
Life is often demanding, but sometimes we demand even more from it. When it does not turn out the way we would like it to, it is difficult to avoid disappointment—it is as if we had just been diagnosed with a serious illness, that illness being life itself. It is a truth that becomes all the more difficult to accept when we realize that the disease is also the cure: the faster we run away, the faster we will return. So here we are, running back and forth, escaping, creating and re-creating the giant blur. At this point, the only way to get even the slightest sign of clarity is to go for a long drive when almost everyone else is asleep.
The world rushes its way in a circle.
Exploring themes of uncertainty, fading idealism and the fear of death is what the Jakarta-based trio, Vague, sought out to do through their first music video. “The Giant Blur”, which is the fourth track from ‘Footsteps’ (2014), became the band’s first attempt to combine their music with visual components. Vague collaborated with Kulturo, a collective initiated by filmmakers Riar Rizaldi and Adythia Utama.
Nothing is clear.
It’s all a giant blur.
The video focuses on a middle-aged man who, upon receiving a letter from a hospital, spends the night driving aimlessly around Jakarta. As a whole, the narrative appears to be easy to follow, but the process of creating the video proved to be a challenge. “For me, Vague’s ‘A Giant Blur’ is a song that’s very hard to visualize as a story,” said Riar. In the end, he and his team decided that it was best to treat the character as the video’s unifying element—a bridge between the story and the song.
While a song is indeed capable of speaking for itself, “The Giant Blur” there is no harm in approaching it from a different perspective.
