London based electronic / technology collective Miro Shot are ready to announce their debut album with the arrival of ‘CONTENT’ due this May. As a teaser prior to its release, they’ve shared a kaleidoscopic, virtual reality themed video clip for Half of Us, highlighting the band’s technological leanings, peppy pop paced electronics and sweeping cinematic soundscapes. Watch the video clip via YouTube below.
About the clip, they said: “We wanted the video to give you a sense of those layers of reality, and those connections to the real and the virtual – the way we are saturated with information, the way meanings behind them can get twisted, distorted or lost, and the effect it has on us. The video has multiple layers of information hidden within it – which you won’t get the first time you watch it (or at least not on a conscious level). Just like with social media, information is flying past you at a rate that is too fast to really take in- tragedies which you have not got time to register, violence which is over before you can be shocked, beauty before you can feel anything and humor before you can laugh. You can watch it all superficially – letting the meanings and references wash over you, or you can go into the video and uncover the subtexts and hidden messages the Miro Shot Collective has hidden within each frame.”
The band’s meteoric rise has been well documented with Clash Magazine describing them as ‘truly breaking boundaries’ on their 2019 EP ‘Servers’. Renowned for their unique live experience, Miro Shot embrace virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence to present a new version of what a band is and can be. Alongside playing regular shows, the band also create multi-sensory mixed reality performances for audiences that are truly one-of-a-kind. Starting in 2017, Miro Shot began staging DIY versions of their VR performances while based in an east London warehouse, but have expanded their remit to perform in art galleries and churches across Europe with BBC and Forbes calling it as “Impressively ahead” and “the future of live music” respectively.
Alongside playing regular shows, groups of up to 20 people are invited to an event earlier in the day to wear VR headsets while the band play one song. As the performance begins the band are seen on the headsets as digital versions of themselves. When a chorus kicks in they are floating above a lake. The possibilities are endless. “An amazing concert is transcendental so we wanted to look at how our notion of reality has changed and fractured as technology becomes more and more prevalent,” Roman Rappak, de facto leader of the group explains.
Stripped from the technology, Miro Shot are a band at their core. “We’re human and we play instruments,” Rappak says. However, saying Miro Shot are just a band would be deceptive. Their collective is open to anyone and currently features 450 members. “Before we even started playing live we’d have people getting in touch to ask how they could invest in our start-up,” Rappak recalls. At first he was wary but given more thought decided, “The most punk thing you could do would be to create a start-up and utilise the tools available to you in the tech world. What’s wrong with adding coders and designers to the band on top of drums and synths? It’s DIY on the most basic level.”
