Orkus! video premiere: MOONS IN RETROGRADE

Automatic translation. Improvements are constantly being worked on.

Moons in Retrograde – this is the project of Kara Kuckoo, an American musician and performance artist living in Germany. Orkus! exclusively presents the video premiere of “The Rotten Tree (Fresh Rot)”. It is the second single from the debut album “The Third Side of the Coin”, which will be released on November 25, 2025. However, the song was actually born much earlier, as Kara explains: “It was my debut song for Moons in Retrograde and the first song I ever wrote and composed entirely on my own. At that point, I hadn’t written music in over a decade because I had no experience as a solo musician, and that false belief held me back for years. When I finally sat down and started composing, it was like buried emotions came pouring out of me with waves of sadness, anger and regret. I remembered the imaginative and passionate child I once was and saw what I had become today and felt so much regret. I desperately wished I could go back and try again, do better. As I looked back, I could see the series of events that were out of my control and led to decisions that have shaped every aspect of my current life. I then just wanted to keep that little child safe.”

Kara spent almost nine months learning how to write and record her compositions on her own. While developing “The Rotten Tree”, she also worked on body painting videos, which in turn led to the creation of the character and video “The Rotten Tree (Fresh Rot)”. She recalls: “It was a dark, androgynous and ugly creature that perfectly matched the content of the song. I showed it to my friend Lux, a video artist, and she immediately fell in love with the song and the look, and then took over directing the video. I called another friend who works in theater and he lent me this big, scary tree costume from theater storage. Lux and I shot the video in various locations: in the attic of an abandoned building in Flensburg, in a field between Germany and Denmark and in my art studio. The result is a dark journey through the inverted reflections of life and a return to the loss of innocence. I particularly love the ending where the tree and the child fight, but the child breaks free and runs off into the darkness of the field. It gives a sense of hope, but also hints that there is more darkness lurking.”