Image: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams
MASS MoCA will present ‘Out Into Us (Slow Down),’ a 17-minute video installation by the band Son Lux and video director Alex Cook, beginning September 12, 2026. The work will be on view in the rear lower gallery of Building 5 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Commissioned by MASS MoCA, Caviar, and Pioneer Works, the installation was created in collaboration with Cook as an audiovisual embodiment of the title track from Son Lux’s forthcoming ninth studio album, ‘Out Into.’ The album is scheduled for release on September 18, 2026. The installation and album track share the title ‘Out Into Us (Slow Down),’ with the work combining the song and its accompanying music video into a single visitor experience.
According to MASS MoCA, the installation creates an expressionistic landscape in which visitors can inhabit the music and moving image simultaneously. Its slowed-down treatment of the song is intended to open up the composition’s less immediately audible details, rather than present the video as a compressed piece of promotional content. The museum describes the result as a collective, real-world experience built around sustained attention.
Son Lux guitarist Rafiq Bhatia led the reworking of the title track, taking the song apart at the level of tempo. “Sound can create a sanctuary — a space in which we can remember what it feels like to be present in our bodies and lost in our thoughts,” Bhatia said in the museum’s announcement. “When you decrease the playback speed of a piece of music, you can really linger in its hidden corners and shadows: passing tensions and moments of release become whole rooms you can step into and stay for a while.”
The installation extends Son Lux’s practice of treating music as an experimental medium. Founded as a solo project by Ryan Lott, Son Lux became a trio in 2014 when Ian Chang and Bhatia joined the project. The group has released six records, including ‘Brighter Wounds’ (2018) and the triple album ‘Tomorrows’ (2021), and has developed a musical language combining electronic construction, emotional intimacy, and influences from soul, hip-hop, and experimental improvisation.
Son Lux also scored the film ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ for which the band received two Academy Award nominations and a BAFTA nomination. The group recently scored Marvel Studios’ ‘Thunderbolts*’ and Bassam Tariq’s forthcoming film ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.’ Cook, who is based in Los Angeles, previously directed Son Lux’s ‘Undertow’ music video, which received the Best Alternative International award at the 2023 UK Music Video Awards and the Golden Frog for Best Music Video at Camerimage.
A related Son Lux concert with mmeadows is scheduled for September 12, 2026, at 8 p.m. in MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center. A limited-edition pink-vinyl pressing of the installation’s score, also titled ‘Out Into Us (Slow Down),’ is set for release through MASS MoCA Records on the same day, with signed copies to be available through the museum’s Research and Development Store.
