Au Coeur du Son Au Coeur du Son

Trippy and hypnotic, the music video “Au Coeur du Son” by Marie Larrivé and Lucas Malbrun is a feast for the senses.

A music student is sitting in class, watching an archival video of a mysterious professor. From there, the student embarks on a surreal journey through various dreamscapes, creating a mesmerizing and otherworldly experience.

One of the most refreshingly odd music videos, if it can even be called a music video (it is taken from Rémi Fox's album, Le rêve éveillé), “Au Coeur du Son” is a hallucinogenic piece of psychedelia that will leave the viewer simultaneously mesmerized, terrified, and blissfully confused.

Inspired by German Expressionist cinema with maybe a dash or two of David Lynch, Larrivé and Malbrun crafted the characters of the male protagonist and mysterious professor on the song’s composer Rémi Fox and the late Italian composer/surrealist poet, Giacinto Scelsi (whose belief that “we must go to the heart of sound” inspired the film’s title).

The duo used a mix of digital animation and hand-painted techniques to create the video. Backgrounds were painted on paper, while character animation was produced using TVPaint. Additionally, 3d-modeled elements were incorporated for the architectural backgrounds. Animators on the project were Hippolyte Cupillard Rénalya, Mirande-Ney, and Hugo Léonard.

Larrivé and Malbrun are graduates of ENSAD Paris. Their previous collaborations include music videos “Tropicool” (2016) and “Saba” (2018). Individually, Malbrun made the short Margarethe 89, which was selected for the Filmmakers Fortnight at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, while Larrivé’s Noir-Soleil (2021) screened at numerous international festivals.

“Au Coeur du Son” is an Eddy production produced by François de Rosanbo and co-produced by Elles et O Records and Olivier Slabiak.

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Chris Robinson

Chris Robinson is a writer and Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF). Robinson has authored thirteen books including Between Genius and Utter Illiteracy: A Story of Estonian Animation (2006), Ballad of a Thin Man: In Search of Ryan Larkin (2008), and Japanese Animation: Time Out of Mind (2010). He also wrote the screenplay for the award-winning animation short, Lipsett Diaries.