Ways in Waves is the brainchild of Brian Raine, a multi-instrumentalist and music producer living out of Edmonton, Alberta. With malleable form and the spirit of experimentation at its core, the group began as a live duo, and eventually expanded to a five piece live band with Raine picking up vocals as well as guitar and keys parts.

With the latest releases – including the previously released “Who in War” and “Everything Taken” – Raine chose to focus the sound of the project into a tighter, brighter, more aggressive sound. Combining aspects of rock, art-pop, and electronic music together into a mixture that propels the listener through controlled chaos, Ways in Waves are now sharing “Gliese,” from their upcoming LP out this September.

Raine took a lot of influence from hyper-pop on “Gliese,” from IDM artists like Iglooghost and Sophie, not necessarily in the specifics of his sound design but in the bravery that artists of their like exhibit in presenting something boldly. “Gliese” is supposed to feel a bit overwhelming, a bit alien… it embodies the coldness and the unfamiliarity of a future without our home planet.

1.1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?

This song began as an instrumental experiment, I was learning Ableton Live’s “session view” and playing around with phasing rhythmic ideas inspired by minimalist composers and gamelan ensembles. I chose synths that sounded sort of like real mallet instruments for this, but… not really, and had the intention of swapping them out for different sounds later. However when I revisited my early demos for the song, I kind of fell in love with the uncanny valley effect that these sounds had, they made me think of how we misremember things, how we see the past with nostalgia goggles on… and that spawned the initial sentiment of the lyrics: people in the future looking back on the past and justifying it, even when they’re justifying a dead planet. I chose to visualize this song because of how direct the messaging is in some ways, I felt that 3D animation would be able to convey the futurism of the lyrical setting while also embodying that idea of nostalgia. The style of the video is reminiscent of early 2000’s 3d cartoons and that’s not a coincidence. 

2.What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?

Mike Guthrtie-Plouffe, who made the video, began with asking me about a few major components that I’d be interested in seeing. I talked about a futuristic city with one tree, and he took that and ran with it where now the tree is actually powering the city entirely, but also can be seen as some sort of religious symbol… like a huge cathedral in the centre of an old european town. I wanted to show the contrast between the futuristic optimism of the verses and the bleak reality of the bridge somehow, and Mike was able to convey that effectively by re-using some of the assets he designed for the city, but also by creating the image of the planet from space. 

3. What was the process of making this video?

It was quite a bit of back and forth, Mike would send me an edit, I’d send back my initial reactions and notes, but more often than not Mike was just so focused on making it as good as he possibly could, and sometimes there were things I thought were fine that he changed completely and made better on his own. I think he was pretty motivated to use some new features in Blender, to try out different animation and modelling techniques and to improve at his craft by pushing the boundaries of what he could do within this video. 

Several years ago, I was doing a lot of reading about different kinds of planets that exist within the habitable zones of stars. I came across Gliese 581, a star with several potentially habitable planets surrounding it, which are all very likely tidally locked (meaning one side always faces the sun, like the moon is to earth). I started imagining how life would evolve in eternal sunshine, eternal darkness, along the paradise line in the center… It was a wonderful fantasy that I could imagine and return to for many years. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that the people who want to leave earth, who want to colonize space, are often the most terrible among us. These people who are willing to put absurd resources into fleeing our planet are the ones who are destroying it, and so this song became about the fallacy of escapism, specifically fleeing to the stars. – Brian Raine