Kate NV's Surreal Short Film Captures 'The Beauty In Simple Things'

There is not only love in a dedication, but an understanding of what it means to love that person or place or thing. Single songs and entire books are dedicated to lovers and family and enemies, and all that comes with them. The Russian electronic musician Kate NV's new album is simply titled для FOR, and was written for her hometown of Moscow. The translation is typed in all caps, as if to boldly shout her love, yet the exploratory music she's created is quiet and hypnagogicly playful, a one-to-one declaration rendered in bubbly bleeps, rippling MIDI percussion and sparkling synths.

In a short film by Sasha Kulak that accompanies для FOR, Kate NV's oddly meditative music is set to the domestic comforts of the mundane.

"All ingenious is simple," Kate NV tells NPR Music. "I think being able to find the beauty in simple things is important. It's like a special kind of harmony and zen. Washing dishes, taking a shower, wiping the dust, doing some morning workouts, cleaning your room — all these simple things help you not only to organize the space around you, but your mind, also."

Kulack manipulates simple actions — waking to an alarm clock, drinking milk, reading a book — by distorting and elongating the images with painterly intent. Inspired by the Moscow conceptual artist Viktor Pivovarov's 1975 series Projects for a Lonely Man, the short film surreally captures the quiet calm of solitude and the creative power of routine.

для FOR is out now via RVNG Intl.

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