Merman is an art object, which the Ukrainian team of Burners is preparing to present at the Burning Man 2021 festival.
A wooden sculpture of a man swimming in the desert against dust storms will symbolize the fact that sometimes each of us can get stuck in the past and not accept one’s present and future. And that even at times like this, we are still free to choose whether to go with or against the flow.
We knew most of the team working on Merman since the Carpe Diem Solutions projects, so we were happy to help them and compose some music for a video presentation of their art object.
Initially, the Merman team wanted to use a ready-made audio solution for their promo video. After several attempts to find the right music, they realized that it wasn’t the best option: the video was making quite the wrong impression. It lacked the depth and emotion that corresponded to the installation’s idea.
As a result, they decided to turn to Vlad so that he could adapt one of his track demos to this task. Vlad almost immediately recalled one electronic sketch from two years ago, and it worked well with the picture, but he couldn’t leave it as it was and created an entirely new composition based on this demo.
The final track is based on electronic textures, with layered on top of it live post-rock, bass, and metal guitars, and several kinds of percussion.
The very idea of the track is inspired and in many ways echoes the concept of the art object: it has a lot of emotions, a sharp sense of the past and dust that clouds the one’s mind and prevents moving forward; the struggle and finally the culmination at the moment when the sculpture burns down and symbolically frees the person from all the restrictions.
The main challenge of this project was tight deadlines, but our team and particularly Vlad is quite used to it, so everything was ready in a day and a half.
Such supersonic speed is a direct consequence of the great relationship and trust we have with the Merman team; without it, the video would hardly have sounded cool on time.
