Crossing countries, cities + radio signals in the experiential tour diary of Damon Eliza Palermo + Evan Stalker’s ‘Chongqing’ video

The crackling white noise of crossed radio signals meets the blazing colour of a 360° CGI animation in the video for Damon Eliza Palermo (aka Magic Touch)’s ‘Chongqing’ track. The Los Angeles-based producer is releasing a 12″ EP called Cathedral via New York’s Lovers Rock label, run by Ital, on September 15, and has teamed up with artist Evan Stalker on this synesthetic trip through layered, disrupted audio and fragmented visual stimuli, premiering today on AQNB.

“I noticed Chongqing had millions of neon lights reflecting on the rivers and buildings, surrounded by mountains,” writes Palermo via email about a night drive through the emerging megacity of Southwest China during a 2016 tour around Asia and Australia. “The van driver pointed to the lights making patterns up and down skyscrapers and, as he was explaining the beautiful phenomenon, he had the radio set in between two stations flickering back and forth between voices and static,” he continues. “I was impressed by the tranquil, yet overwhelming situation and wanted to portray this in the song.”

The outcome of this real life audio-visual experience is this ‘Chongqing’ video, where Palermo combines mulitple recordings of drives like this one in China, with the addition of pitch and synth pads, while Stalker interpreted it further through his studies of surface and movement. “Damon played me an early version of the song and I really liked the sense of space and all the detail in the shifting textures,” adds Stalker, while elaborating on how he confused the feature detection algorithms of motion blur effects to create a layering that had a similar feel to the song. “Producing it in a 360° format seemed like a good way to push the idea of space even further.”**

Damon Eliza Palermo’s Cathedral EP is out via New York’s Lovers Rock on September 15, 2017.