Denver's Spiral Cell Debuts a Mysterious Music Video

Denver experimental artist Spiral Cell has released a new music video for the song “Consonance.” It's mysterious and creepy, leaving much up to the viewer's interpretation.

Directed by Noe DeLeon, “Consonance” offers a muddled sci-fi exploration of artificial intelligence, the relationship between life, simulation and video games, memory retention and loss, and creation — all areas of interest to the artist behind Spiral Cell, Scott Uhl.

While he prefers to be opaque when offering answers as to what the video is actually about, it’s clear that the visual experience of his music is as important to his art as the music itself.


“What it means to me might not necessarily connect with someone else," he says. "But if someone else watches the video and connects with it in a different way, I think that’s more valuable. Some people don’t like that, but I love keeping things a mystery; I think it makes things so much more interesting.”

The video channels his appreciation for the unknowable in art — a trait often found in the work of filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson or the Coen Brothers that makes a lasting cultural impact, Uhl notes.

“As an audience member, I’m huge on following the mystery and not really knowing and just going along for the ride, so I’m trying to do that as a creator this time: keep it a mystery and let people experience it and see how they react to it," he says. “I would rather have people have a negative reaction to it and go, ‘What the hell is that?’ or have a reaction that’s, ‘Wow, that was awesome,’ instead of thinking, ‘Oh, that’s just another band.’"