zon

Infinite Null: Zon's "Void"

zon

Not all beginnings are hopeful. After all, even nightmares must start somewhere.

Zon‘s nightmare begins where many others do: in the suburbs. Their video for “Void” from last year’s Palace opens with a slow pan across identical homes set to a creeping motif that could have scored any number of suburban slasher films. Director Christopher Marquez holds onto that establishing shot for only a moment before asking you to hold the thought. Instead of playing out like a Wes Craven film, Zon throw you into the realm of the abstract.

“Void” is the first of a three-part video series from Zon, so it’s appropriate that after the suburban table setting, the video begins with the raw and unformed material of a newly born universe. Simple shapes emerge from the abyss of a white page, straight lines that jostle a perfect circle as they form into recognizable geometric shapes. Befitting the rudimentary images, “Void” is built on the slow and sustained riffs of metal’s own birthplace: doom metal. The two grow in tandem, Zon building in volume and the images in their complexity until the laws of this new universe shatter into digitized chaos.

At first glance, the forms that emerge from this psychedelic soup don’t seem to mean much. In 2018, a dancing skeleton is more likely to be seen as a three times-ironic meme than any symbol of real import. This may very well be the point. Notice that the cube containing all this web-art detritus flies directly into the bedroom window of a suburban households. Is this the Pandora’s box of the Internet, waiting to be opened by some bored teen? Difficult to say judging only from this first edition, which makes “Void” as good a teaser as any for the two videos yet to come.

This is another place where the video serves as a parallel to Zon’s music. On Palace, “Void” is a breather between the vicious attack of the bulk of record and its mind-bending coda. As a standalone track, the space that felt calm now feels ominous, like a warning of madness to come.

Categories: