On June 28 Sub Pop will release Washed Out‘s fifth album, Notes From A Quiet Life, which is the music of the band that has always levitated over a timeless frontier. In 2021, Washed Out’s creative force, Ernest Greene, left Atlanta to return to the countryside he knew growing up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts and today, Greene is preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him.

Unabashed and unafraid to pioneer and incorporate new technologies within his art, Greene enlisted multi-disciplinary artist, writer and director Paul Trillo to direct the music video for the album’s lead single, “The Hardest Part.” Created using OpenAI’s Sora, “The Hardest Part” marks the first collaboration with an artist and filmmaker to be generated entirely utilizing this technology.

While talking about the music video, Director Paul Trillio says: “I had the seed of this video concept 10 years ago, where we do an infinite zoom of a couple’s life over the course of many decades, but I have yet to attempt it because I figured it’d be too ambitious for a music video. While the technology is experimental and cutting-edge, I wanted to do something that also felt like a classic music video that would hold your attention no matter what tech was being used in the process. I was specifically interested in what makes Sora so unique.”

Trillio adds: “It offers something that couldn’t quite be shot with a camera, nor could it be animated in 3D, it was something that could have only existed with this specific technology. The surreal and hallucinatory aspects of AI allow you to explore and discover new ideas that you would have never dreamed of. ”

Grenne adds with: “‘The Hardest Part’ is a story about nostalgia and love lost.  With the video, I wanted to bring this narrative to life in a sincere way that was also exciting and unexpected. I’ve been a fan of Paul for a long time and he is amazingly skilled at incorporating cutting-edge visual effects that elevate a story instead of simply supplementing it with shock and awe. He was at the top of my list of potential collaborators. ”

The artist continues with: “What he’s come up with is nostalgic, sad, uplifting, and often quite strange.  However, he still manages to make you feel for the characters and invested in the journey of how their lives progress. I think that Paul is right when he says that this video could only be made using this new AI technology.  In my opinion, the hallucinatory quality of Sora clips feel like the beginning of a new genre unto itself – one that is surreal and unpredictable and entirely unique to traditional cinema or even animation.”

OpenAI’s Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative videos from text instructions. Though the model is not yet released, OpenAI is working with a number of visual artists, designers and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be most helpful for creative professionals.

Notes From A Quiet Life Track List
 

1. Waking Up
2. Say Goodbye
3. Got Your Back
4. The Hardest Part
5. A Sign
6. Second Sight
7. Running Away
8. Wait on You
9. Wondrous Life
10. Letting Go

Photo Credit: Brett Padelford