Electro Pop, Indie Electro Pop, Indie Synth Pop, New Video, singer/songwriters, Soul Music, Synth Pop, Video, Video Review Video
by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Trippy and Stylistic New Video for Chet Faker and Marcus Marr’s “The Trouble With Us”

 

London-based DJ, producer, electronic music artist and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Marr is an internationally recognized artist, who has released a number of critically acclaimed singles through renowned electro pop/dance music/dance punk label DFA Records. His two best known singles “Brown Sauce,”  was released earlier and was named in Pitchfork’s Tracks, while “The Music,” which appeared in the film, Pusher  landed at number 3 on Spin’s Best Dance 2013. Adding to a growing international profile, Marr has regularly spun DJ sets at Berlin’s world famous Berghain/Passenger Bar.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of years, you’ll likely be familiar with Australian-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and producer Nick Murphy, best known to the music world by his moniker Chet Faker. Since the release of his critically and commercially successful full-length debut, Built on Glass, Murphy has become both an internationally recognized artist and a JOVM mainstay. And although Built on Glass was released almost two years ago, Murphy has been incredibly busy — over the past year alone, he’s played sold out shows on 5 continents, as well as some of the world’s biggest and most renowned festivals, including Primavera Sound, Coachella, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury. Interestingly, during that time Murphy has managed to record new material, including the “Kill the Doubt/Sleeping Alone” 7 inch with his fellow countrymen The Cactus Channel.
Also during that period Marr and Murphy had built up a mutual appreciation society through where else — Twitter. Initially, as Marr explained in press notes, their collaboration began when the duo exchanged DMs over recording processes and other tech nerd stuff, and after recognizing that they were like minds, they then started to exchange voice memos with some ideas and sketches, which eventually lead to Murphy suggesting that they should try to work on something together. The end result is the duo’s 4 song EP Work, which was released through Murphy’s Detail Records, Downtown Records across the US  and Fontana North Distribution across Canada.

The EP’s first single “The Trouble With Us” pairs Murphy’s soulful crooning about a dysfunctional yet emotionally and sexually charged relationship with a slick, club-banging production consisting of angular Nile Rodgers-inspired funk guitar chords, a sinuous bass line reminiscent of Daft Punk‘s “Get Lucky,” Boulevards‘ “Got To Go” and Michael Jackson‘s “Burn This Disco Out,” and a ridiculously infectious and sensual hook. Granted, Murphy has a reputation for crafting incredibly sexy material; however, this particular single may arguably be the sexiest and most straight-forward, club-friendly song he has released.

The recently released official video was directed by the Barcelona-based collective Kinopravda and it explores the central theme of the song’s lyrics — a romantic couple that meets cute and becomes increasingly dysfunctional and self-destructive as they continue on. Additional versions of the couple appear and continue to repeat the same actions and mistakes over and over and over and over again. It’s trippy and yet points out how quickly relationships can bring out the worst in us and become increasingly dysfunctional without you ever recognizing what happened.