Viz students to create music video
for British metal band Tesseract

When the progressive British metal band, Tesseract, was looking for a director to make a video for “Eden,” a song on their debut album, bassist Amos Williams knew he wanted to enlist the creative team of Ganesh Rao and Jonny Greenwald, Master of Visualization students at Texas A&M, whose talent he had spotted in their earlier work, “Empyrean.”

“One day a jaw-dropping, stunning video appears (online). I mean beautiful, cinematic, and emotive,” said Williams, who added that the video, “Empyrean,” raised the bar for independent creators.

“It was a no-brainer to approach Ganesh … we're very excited to see what we can create together.”

Greenwald will be the video’s director of photography.

Rao, who directed and produced “Empyrean,” and Greenwald, its co-producer and director of photography, worked with guidance from Karen Hillier, then a professor of visualization who has since retired.

In the video notes for “Empyrean” on vimeo.com, its creators said their objective was to create a visually intriguing cinematic experience with stunning technicality and conceptual elements.

“Minimal and symbolic characters and sets were used to vaguely portray themes of genesis with underlying elements of the Hindu mythology,” they stated in the video notes. “Musically, the piece has ambient and atmospheric soundscapes layered over powerful rhythmic motifs and voices. The piece has a pleasant surreal incline, with enough room left intentionally for subjective interpretation by the audience.

Tesseract, formed in 2003, is joining Between the Buried and Me and Animals as Leaders on a North American concert tour beginning in October 2011, with shows scheduled in Houston Nov. 17, Dallas Nov. 18, Austin Nov. 19 and San Antonio Nov. 20.

Contact:   Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.