Producer and synthesist Hugo R.A. Paris has a new video for the track “Orb of Truth” off his Threaded Habitat LP out this past August via Jacktone Records/Beacon Sound. This is Paris’ third LP for Jacktone, though his previous releases, 2015’s Mystique Youth and 2016’s Horizons Beneath the Surface, were put out under his Lavender moniker.
The French-born musician’s lifelong interest in synthesizers began when his grandmother gave him a battery-operated keyboard as a child. This early preoccupation with the instrument eventually led to a degree in music theory and engineering while at university in Le Mans. Having gone on to attain a Masters in Vibrations, Acoustics and Signal Processing, Paris moved to America to work on the LIGO project studying cosmic gravitational waves. Since then, Paris has relocated to Portland, OR to develop his modular synthesizer the Spherical Wavetable Navigator, or SWN (pronounced “swan”), with Eurorack manufacturer 4MS.
“Orb of Truth” demonstrates the producer’s ability to craft hypnotic grooves and searing atmospheres filled with tension and dread. The video for the track was shot on film in New Zealand by native artist, and now Portland resident, Sam Hamilton. Using the mirror as a metaphor for this “Orb of Truth,” Hamilton’s participants hold up the glass on their surrounding environments. But what it reflects back is merely an image of a particular vantage and not the place itself. Extending the metaphor, Hamilton seems to question just how we find “Truth” in this reflecting and refracting hall of mirrors. Meanwhile, Paris provides the perfect soundtrack for this unsettling epistemological inquiry.
