We are stoked (yes, stoked) to share with you the music video for “Humming”, the latest track from COUNTERZINE favorite lo-fi rocker Red Pants, featuring guillaume AltamirA.
Following last year’s brilliant Distortion and Snow (which we were also fortunate enough to premiere), DIY enthusiast Jason Lambeth (Red Pants, as well as the owner of Painted Blonde) is back with “Humming”, a contribution to a song challenge compilation releasing tomorrow through 424 Recording. While Distortion and Snow assuredly did have its quieter, more contemplative moments, the noisy textures found throughout bestowed upon it a cold, brittle atmosphere: conversely, “Humming” is warm. What distortion there is has been greatly reigned in, in favor of a softer, cozier sound. Terrible puns are occasionally appropriate: the electric hums. Collaborator guillaume AltamirA’s influence is really felt, from the gentle strums of acoustic guitar and relaxed drumming, to most prominently the bass: rich, audible, and leading the song’s tone. We wouldn’t say AltamirA stole this one away from Red Pants, but his impact is massive. This is just a shot in the dark as we know little about the future plans of Red Pants for this track beyond its inclusion on the 424 comp, but it feels as though it’d be right at home on a companion album to Distortion and Snow: the fire to its ice.
Jason Lambeth aka Red Pants (photo credit: Camille)
Speaking of fire, it’s a motif of the video, particularly the match that lightly flickers and warps as “Humming” does the same. Beyond this, it shares the same simple, charming, homemade feel characteristic of all of Lambeth’s work, with him and AltamirA just playing under the glow of a flame and red light, showing hints of psychedelia as their forms shift from opacity to transparency and back again, echoing and overlaying.
You can listen to and watch the video for “Humming” below:
“Humming” is officially out tomorrow, January 24, on 424 Recording’s ‘Fall Song Challenge’ compilation, which will be available here. Be sure to follow Red Pants on his website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud to keep up-to-date on his work.
Today, we’re excited to premiere the new music video for “Echo”, from Brooklyn indie rocker Katie Capri, aka Fern Mayo.
Premiered by Stereogumlast year, “Echo” is bottled-up emotion profusely spurting out after too much pressure has built up: verses leak out as tense, pained wails without pauses, words oscillating and bleeding into each other with no space to take a breath. In the phrasing, there’s an attempt at restraint, a desperation to keep the bottle plugged, but ultimately, it’s all for naught: when the chorus comes, the angst and frustration have come to a boil and are released as a run of wild, wordless howls: catharsis. The guitars similarly exist on the cusp of chaos: dreamlike, with an undercurrent of untamed, noisy violence ready to rear its head.
Fern Mayo (‘Week of Charm’ album artwork; photo credit: Bao Ngo)
The video, directed by Emma Penrose, matches the mood of the track well. Through a filter of hazy grain, we watch Fern Mayo among nature, freely mingling with the elements: running her hands through fields of vibrant purple flowers and streams of clear, clean water. Elsewhere, she is shown standing with just her vocals and guitar, crying out like a wolf does to the moon. The film bubbles and tears as her voice does: raw and pure.
You can watch the video for Fern Mayo’s “Echo” below:
“Echo” comes from Fern Mayo’s album ‘Week of Charm’, available to purchase here. You can keep up-to-date with her work by following her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Today, we’re thrilled to premiere the music video for Long Beach weird punks The Lice’s “Serial Killer”.
The first single from the band’s upcoming 2020 LP Hoarder House UFO on Fork in the Outlet Records, “Serial Killer” is sure to please fans familiar with their past work, particularly last year’s JK Ultra, which saw the band inch ever so slightly towards accessibility with a cleaner, less cacophonous sound and stronger focus on pop songwriting. “Serial Killer” might not be quite as straightforward in its approach to crafting melody as songs such as “So Bourgeois” and “Nancy Spungen”, but its moody, slinking groove of a bassline is just as immediately infectious while warbling synths, a repeated piercing high tone, and spectre-like vocals ensure that you never get too comfortable with what they’re doing. “Serial Killer” accomplishes a lot in just over a minute while still keeping things tight and minimal, which at this point feels like a trademark of The Band That Refuses to Go Two Full Minutes.
The Lice (photo credit: Hali Espinoza)
The song is accompanied by a video compilation of rollerblade tricks with an aged aesthetic filter reminiscent of footage you’d see in a TV skate documentary. There’s not a ton to analyze here besides to say that it matches the song to a T, with both intersecting on the same wavelength of effortless cool.
You can watch the video for “Serial Killer” below:
The single release also includes another song from Hoarder House UFO titled “Jumping Spider”:
You can stream and purchase The Lice’s “Serial Killer” here, and you can keep up with the band’s activities and output, including the release of ‘Hoarder House UFO’ by following them on Instagram and Bandcamp.
Today, we’re honored to premiere the brand new music video by folk/art pop artist Hazel Iris, appropriately titled “Folk”.
The song itself from Iris’ 2018 album Nine Sisters, as well as an eight-part conceptual vaudeville inspired project entitled The Story of Lily, which “tells the story of a single individual who ventures out into the world alone, complete with murder, lust, and adventure”. “Folk” is a traditional, short, and jaunty tune with a theatrical cabaret twist and flair aided in large part by her Kate Bush-esque vocal delivery.
The Story of Lily
While “Folk” did receive a video previously within the context of The Story of Lily visual album project, this version for the Nine Sisters recording is notably different. While the previous version was part of a stage performance by Iris, this stars the puppetry of The Wondering Hands Puppet Company and was shot on iPhone by Iris herself. In the video, skeletons of various colors dance and play music amidst a backdrop of nature, whilst still maintaining the “old world” aesthetic via grain filter.
You can watch the video for “Folk” below:
Hazel Iris’ ‘Nine Sisters’ is available to purchase here, and ‘The Story of Lily’ can be watched/heard here. Be sure to follow Iris on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to keep up-to-date on her work.
Earlier this year, Counterzinefavorites Tennis Club released their album Pink, a breezy mini-album full of short, sugary, perfect lo-fi indie pop gems, and today we’re thrilled to share with you the new music video for standout track “Ghost Cops” off of that same record.
“This is my favorite song off the record. A couple of months ago I was picking up my mom from the airport when I got pulled over by the police in a creepy Oklahoma town. They took some weed I forgot I had in my pocket and gave me a 600 dollar ticket. The song is a post break up song with a police story. I call them ghost cops because they linger in the dark and come out of nowhere.”
In contrast to the murkier origin story behind the track, “Ghost Cops” and its accompanying video are far more light and bright. Director Miguel Rojas’ video’s primary connections to the song are the pipe hits, as well the pastel color palette of soft blues, pinks, and yellows and quirky imagery peppered throughout that match the jovial tone of the bouncing melody. The video is aptly set on a tennis court, opening with an aforementioned pipe hit before a young woman and an individual with a tennis ball for a head seem to perform an out-of-sync portion of the song along to backwards cue cards presented by a young man. Then, the young man and woman play tennis, while the tennis ball-headed character smokes weed and dances. After the tennis match, the man gets on his knees, begging and presenting flowers to the woman in a declaration of love. The video ends on a long, slow, suspenseful approach for a kiss by the woman, only to turn away at the very last second, ending on a quietly sad and awkward note. Rather than directly relating to the post-breakup aspect of the song (the viewer is given no indication whether the two have been in a prior relationship), it more ties to the repeated lyric “You only want me / When you can’t have me”, a more broad statement on a one-sided relationship.
You can watch the video for “Ghost Cops” below:
Tennis Club’s ‘Pink’ is out now and available here direct from the band in the states, or from their Spanish label Elefant Records (recommended for European listeners) here digital and LP. Be sure to follow Tennis Club on all of their social media to keep up-to-date with their work, including Instagram, Facebook, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud.
Today, we’re lucky to premiere the music video for Finnish electro-duo Allas’ second single, “Tuu Mun Mukaan”.
The song, the title of which roughly translates to “Come Along (With Me)”, is sung in the duo’s native language a revolves around a motif of sailing out to sea, beckoning you to come along and join them. The song’s melody ebbs and flows like the hypnotic waves of the digital sea, comprised of psychedelic and eerie electronics. Percussion is largely minimalist but hits hard and fast with the late bridge, like those waves crashing down upon you. The narrative seems to be a metaphor for a suicide pact: abandoning the limitations of the earthly plane to shipwreck out at sea. There’s an underlying romanticism to it, making it both beautiful and disturbing, and the calm vocal delivery along with the melody and instrumental tone make it feel like you’re almost being programmed by some sort of synthetic higher power. It’s in no way depressive despite this theme: rather, it’s presented as enlightenment. Real Serial Experiments Lain vibes on this one.
Songwriter/producer Santeri Palkivaara describes the song’s genesis thus:
“The song came to be out of Sofia’s cheery iPhone demo, from which we started to take it into a more decadent direction, especially in terms of the narrative. The production is heavier than on the first single “Anna Mulle Se” and reminds a bit of a sculpture, since it has a lot of elements mixed in that date back to numerous different versions of the song from last year. “Tuu Mun Mukaan” also features Anssi Alhopuro’s electronic percussions that provided the song some nice details at the final stages of the production.”
Single artwork for “Tuu Mun Mukaan” (credit: Hanna Malinen)
The video supplements the song then in being equally tranquil and mesmerizing. Bright and blurred, it’s a kaleidoscope of hazy zoomed-in shots and spellbinding interpretive dance.
Director Henrika Kurkimäki describes the video thus:
“I started visualizing the music video synesthetically: the artists and I put together a color scheme for the tune, on top of which I built clips reflecting the song’s texture and atmosphere. Listening to the tune, my first mental images were 1980’s fantasy films, but also futurism. Therefore I strived for uniting the feel of a CRT TV with nuances of the uplifting space of psychedelic dance.”
Lyric translation:
Without a direction or a harbour
The ship sails towards the open sea
In the deep dark waters
Wouldn’t you stay by my side?
Now’s the time to leave behind
our paradise amidst destruction
Abandon everything vain, mundane
There’s nothing you need to bring along
Come along (with me)
Sometimes it’s good to end/decide things together
Even if we wouldn’t stay alive for too long
Come along
Through the waves you can see clearer
The dreams you already forgot
Come with me to the bottom of the sea vanishing
Amidst the weird fish
You won’t feel no pain no more
If you follow me until the end
Show me you’re unafraid of death
When down we sink
“Tuu Mun Mukaan” is Allas’ second single, following “Anna Mulle Se”:
Today, we’re fortunate to premiere the latest lyric video and track from Berlin art pop singer-songwriter Arya Zappa with “Goodbye”.
The follow-up to her most recent single “Words” (premiered by SonOfMarketing), “Goodbye” is minimal yet theatrical and hauntingly beautiful, characterized by darkly toned and plotted synths and Zappa’s brooding and androgynous vocals, full of subtle, evocative phrasing. When the song reaches the crescendos of the choruses, the song balloons with grandiosity and soars among the night sky with a dramatic flair not far removed from the glam works of Bowie’s early seventies output.
Single artwork of Arya Zappa’s “Goodbye”
Similarly to the song, its video is equally simple yet effective, featuring the lyrics over a black-and-white CRT TV-like image of a shack, which over the course of the song catches fire and erupts into a blazing inferno, burning down to the ground. This ties into the song’s theme of endings. While the video itself doesn’t get into this point, the song (particularly its chorus) implies that now that this run-down shack has been destroyed, a new one can be built in its place (a metaphor for both relationships and lives). Taking this into account, it takes on a bittersweet context, melding the sadness of losing something once held dear with the promise that something equally great might take its place.
Lyrics:
Run, keep running
Have you been there before?
If life’s a game
What are you going to sow?
There’s so much I wanna do
And so little, little time
All the places I’m going
Where even crows couldn’t land
There’ll be time for you to start
All over again
And again
And for every hello
There’ll be goodbye
Goodbye, my friend
We don’t know about tomorrow
But we think
About it anyway
I’m wondering
If I was ever with you
Or just chased some better day
I close my eyes again
See places
Never seen
But I’ve been there
Many times
Walking on the edges
Of a dream
Arya Zappa’s “Goodbye” officially releases July 5th via Kobra Recordings. Be sure to follow Zappa on social media including her website, Facebook, SoundCloud, and Instagram to keep up-to-date.
It’s Monday morning, and what better way to start your day and week than with a nutritious breakfast with the universe? Today we’re thrilled to premiere the brand new music video for “Soul Siren”, the latest single from London-based singer-songwriter, producer and visual artist Bloom de Wilde.
Directed by Bloom de Wilde alongside Kai Noboku, the video stars a jovial de Wilde making her way down the stairs in mask and pajamas to fix breakfast. As she opens her refrigerator for the first time, we see that rather than being stocked with traditional breakfast foods, it is instead a portal in the form of a collage from which an arm extends and hands her various craft or eccentric versions of food: first a drawn and colored-in faux milk carton; next, an egg that when cracked spawns not an egg, but a miniature cat; and finally, a bag representing cereal that’s instead filled with what appears to be felt, in an assortment of colors and shapes. The fourth time de Wilde goes to the fridge, a being rolls out, implied to be the one who was handing her the ingredients. She is also de Wilde, but also a personification of the universe and the “soul siren”: a representation of what stirs inspiration within her. This de Wilde, in contrast with the first, is muted: while the pajama-clad one beams and belts out the song, the soul siren never sings or speaks and while expressive is far more subtle and subdued. Her main method of communication is the art inside her, in a very literal way. Images flicker through her body via kaleidoscopic green screen. To extrapolate upon the meaning, we believe the two de Wilde’s to be symbolic of her synesthesia in addition the soul siren representing inspiration and art. The first de Wilde communicates through the direct, auditory aspects of song while the soul siren responds with images. This is likely indicative of her creative process as sounds and images feed into each other. Together, they enjoy an unorthodox meal (some of our favorite moments including the stop-motion sequence of the spinning bowl and the soul siren biting into her plate) while over time seemingly gaining greater understanding of each other.
The soul siren (cosmic pattern), as seen in the video for “Soul Siren” (directed by Bloom de Wilde & Kai Nobuko)
Bloom de Wilde on the song and creative process:
“Soul Siren is a love letter to the Universe. Or as Plato would put it: “this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence… a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related”. The song was first conceived at a live gig, as a spontaneous improvisation, simply enjoying the flow of creative revelation. Luckily my friend recorded it, and I started working on it; whilst doing the dishes, whilst walking in the woods with my child, whilst travelling to gigs. When it was ready, we recorded it live; drums, vocals and rhodes, but then I started to hear all this other stuff. Trumpets, of course. Some kora, singing cats, and trees whispering their joyful secrets. “Here we are and we and everything in this world has a Soul and you are our Soul Siren”. So of course, I could only comply.”
“Soul Siren” is set for official release on July 8 and can be pre-ordered via Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, Bandcamp, and Google Play. Be sure to follow Bloom de Wilde on all of her social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SoundCloud for further news and updates.
Over a 20+ year career, San Francisco’s Derek Gedalecia has released over 100 varied experimental forays into music, releasing eccentric entries on label catalogs such as NNA Tapes with 2007’s Unsounds and Domo Live (a self-split EP and live recording) and Hausu Mountain with 2016’s In Dual Mono (a cassette consisting of a single composition with the left and right audio channels split between the sides, requiring Zaireeka shenanigans to hear its stereo form). With Polyphonic Demo, Gedalecia has crafted what may be both his simplest and most varied work. While earlier this year we compared Period Bomb’s Lost and Found to the Residents’ Commercial Album, that comparison is even more apparent here, if less so in concept and more so in form. Whereas that album was a concept album about demos the way Commercial Album was about radio pop, Polyphonic Demo structurally nearly identical to the classic album, with both consisting of 40+ synth-led explorations, each lasting exactly a single minute. Beyond this similarity however, Polyphonic Demo is near the polar opposite of Commercial Album: the yin to its yang, so to speak. Where the goal of Commercial Album was to satirize and expose the inherent redundancies of pop music, using the time limitation as an added mocking restraint, Polyphonic Demo instead has its time rule as its only rule, using it not as a limitation, but rather a tool to facilitate a constant stream of ideas. The title Polyphonic Demo essentially boils down to “display of various sounds”. The title fits. It’s nearly impossible to write a review of the album that attempts to summarize an album with no summary to be formed. A full track-by-track is similarly daunting due to the sheer abundance of tracks. So how does one actually explain Polyphonic Demo?
Luckily, there are several (but not 44, at least yet) music videos we can use to get some small semblance of a grasp on the album. Derek and Ratskin Records have allowed us to premiere three new music videos for the tracks “Chill Out Room World”, “Gallop Sparkler”, and “Sales Theme”, and along with the album’s five other music videos to date, we’ll use these to look at a solid, but manageable fraction of Polyphonic Demo.
The first of our three premieres, the video for the album’s second track “Chill Out Room World” is directed by Fletcher Pratt and features bright, pink and green psychedelic imagery of aquatic life, largely focused on gently drifting seahorses. The track is calm and saturated, transporting the listener to a magical aquarium.
Directed by Ryan Kuehn, the video for track six “Ad Break” features a glitching screen of multi-colored rectangles akin to one you’d see late at night when certain channels go off the air, or during a production error. The song itself is also suitably glitchy to match.
The video for track seven “Marathon Man Dance” directed by David Russell Stempowski features two simultaneous pictures: a smaller one in the middle of the screen cycling through colored images of mutating psychedelia followed by the emergence of nature, while the larger one flips through black-and-white haziness. This does well to match the disorienting syncopation of the track.
Originally premiered via Houdini Mansions, the video for track eight “Blue Guitar” was directed by Gavin George. “Blue Guitar” is the only live recorded track on ‘Polyphonic Demo’ to receive a video so far and as such, the video is the only one to feature Gedalecia himself. The video starts with a clear shot of him playing on a rocky shore before the camera zooms out to a sky view and drifts along the cityscape, only to find him once again at the end, performing on the highway.
The second of our premieres, the video for track eleven “Gallop Sparkler” was directed by Spencer Hicks and features watercolor painting coated in a floaty, warbling fog to match the cloudy, inebriating effects of the ambient piece.
The video for track eighteen “Suspense Jag” was initially premiered via I Heart Noise and was directed by Ratskin Records owner Michael Daddona. The imagery on display here in combination the sci-fi tonal aesthetic of the song feels inspired by alien abduction, being exposed to over-stimulation in testing aboard a UFO.
Track 31 “Sad Theme on High”‘s video was premiered by Rood Woof and was directed by Frank Pollard. It features old black-and-white photos where one individual is invariably substituted by an ominous black silhouette before cycling to the next image, perhaps in reference to the dark underbelly of seemingly idyllic nostalgia.
Finally, our third premiere is for “Sales Theme”, the video for the forty-first track, directed by Alex Cruse. A steady and forward yet disorienting track, it’s accompanied by flashing black-and-white images, seemingly imbued with subliminal messaging in reference to the subliminal messages used in advertisement to sell things (hence “Sales Theme”).
All of these videos are simple yet deceptively complex, and while they still barely scratch the surface of what Polyphonic Demo has to offer, they are indicative of the album overall. This is an absurdly dense record, as well as an auditory Rorschach of sorts. What you gleam from this may be entirely different from what we do. It’s incredibly impressive for an artist to be releasing music this forward-thinking decades into a career. Headboggle is a wellspring of auditory ideas, and there’s no better time to take a drink than now.
It’s the birthday of Onesie bassist Zack Fanelli, and what better way to celebrate than to debut the brand new music video for the Brooklyn power pop band’s “Final Days of Nineteen”!
The video sees front-man Ben Haberland taking a solitary stroll through the recreational areas of Long Lake, NY, where he spent childhood summer vacations sleeping on the ground, building campfires, and watching bears play in trash at the local garbage dump. The return to the origin of nostalgic memories of youth holds significance in relation to the song, which deals with the human habit of idealizing the past and being dissatisfied with the present. In the chorus, Haberland tallies decades as arbitrary markers of progress, and nearly as separate lives altogether: “Final days of nineteen / Same goals as twenty-nine / Same goes for thirty-nine / Will I make it out of life alive / This time?” Obviously one cannot literally exit ‘life’ still living, and as such these lyrics are more a reference to Haberland’s concern with making it through another decade without dissociating from a life that he may feel is on rails or isn’t progressing in a manner that is satisfactory (“And eventually / Become a character in your own story / Screenagers / Sign the affidavit please”). There’s also a conflict between nature and city communicated via layered imagery, likely representing the un-molded state of childhood and the more rigid, crafted state of adulthood, respectively.
Two motifs we found particularly interesting (whether they were intentionally symbolic or not) were that of the tennis racket and the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man™. The video opens with Haberland wandering about a tennis court, frequently gesturing as though he were playing it like a guitar. There’s a cut away in French New Wave cinema fashion and the racket has been replaced by a real guitar, but Haberland’s demeanor and mannerisms remain unchanged: whether it’s a tennis racket or a guitar, he’s going through the same motions. Additionally, the tube man can be seen as a representation of Haberland himself: moving, yet stuck in place. The black-and-white (evoking the past), subtitled (which plays both on the Godard-isms of the video, as well as the catchy, karaoke sing-a-long nature of the song) video is minimalist yet dense with symbolism, as well as intimate and yet oddly distant.
Personal yet hazy.
Like an old memory.
“Final Days of Nineteen” is the third song from the band’s recently released Umpteenth to receive a video, following “Award Show” and “Customers”. We, along with the likes of Austin Town Hall, NeuFutur and others, strongly recommend you give a listen to the full album, which has been favorably compared to the work of Big Star, Shoes and Pavement. Our contribution to the comparison pool is Big Dipper, particularly their stellar 2012 comeback album Crashes on the Platinum Planet, with its dual guitar attack, layered vocals, abundantly quirky and often absurd lyrics, huge hooks and addictive melodies.
Onesie’s ‘Umpteenth’ is available to purchase from the band here or from their label Dadstache Records here, digital, LP and cassette. Be sure to follow Onesie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and SoundCloud to keep up-to-date with the band, and watch the ridiculous video below of Ben showing off the tri-color LP version of ‘Umpteenth’.
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