Tag: Fred Armisen

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Joe Wong Teams Up With Fred Armisen on a Lyrical and Trippy Visual for “Nite Creatures”

Throughout the course of this past year, I’ve written quite a bit about the rising Milwaukee-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and composer, Joe Wong. Wong has had a lengthy career as a drummer — but he has made a name for himself for his scores for a number of acclaimed TV series, including Master of None, Russian Doll, Ugly Delicious, Awkafina is Nora from Queens, and others — and for being the host of The Trap Set podcast.

Earlier this year Wong released his Mary Lattimore-produced full-length debut, Nite Creatures, and so far I’ve written about four of the album’s previously released singles — including: the Man Who Sold The World-era David Bowie-like “Dreams Wash Away,” the Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles-like “Nuclear Rainbow,” the Scott Walker-like “Minor,” and “Day After Day,” a sobering exploration of free will versus fate that doesn’t have easy answers. Continuing an incredible run of stunningly lush yet brooding material, the album’s latest single, album title track “Nite Creatures” is a slow-burning and deliberately crafted track focuses on existential dread with a rapturous and swooning psychedelia. If Wong wasn’t a contemporary artist, you might mistakenly think that “Nite Creatures” was released sometime between 1966-1970.

Directed by Fred Armisen, the recently released video follows a brooding Wong as he enters a vaguely Eastern-styled house. As he wanders through the house, we see some deeply kaleidoscopic and psychedelic effects happen to him and to his surroundings, suggesting that Wong was going through a deeply spiritual awakening of some sort. Much like the song itself, it’s a slow-burning and gorgeously shot fever dream — but with something dark and murky on the fringes.

Interestingly, the collaboration between the duo can trace some of its origins back to the 1990s: Armisen was the dummer for Trenchmouth and Wong was a high-school kid in a math rock band named after an extremely obscure Dune reference. Wong wound up reconnecting with Armisen in 2013: Wong was drumming for Marine Stern. A few years later, Armisen asked Wong to help produce his first comedy special Standup For Drummers.

“It was inspiring to witness how he’d evolved from the drummer I met over twenty years ago to the singular talent he is today,” Wong says. “When I decided to make a video for ‘Nite Creatures,’ I thought Fred would be the ideal person to direct. Because of his sense of narrative rhythm (we’re both drummers, after all), surrealist aesthetic, and ability to make creative decisions on the fly, he proved himself the perfect director, indeed.”

“I love Joe’s album,” Armisen adds, “so when he asked me to work on the video, I was like, ‘YES!’ The song is so sonically rich, I think it makes dreamy videos in everyone’s mind. I just wanted to try to match that feeling.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising Aussie Singer-Songwriter Carla Geneve Releases an Intimate Visual for “Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover”

With the release of last year’s self-tiled debut EP, the Perth, Australia-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Carla Geneve quickly established herself as one of Australia’s rapidly rising artists — thanks in part to material centered around a unique brand of brutally honest songwriting and a captivating live show. Building upon a growing profile, Geneve has played sold out shows and festivals including Laneway Festival and Falls Festival, and she’s toured with Cat Power, Kurt Vile, Belle & Sebastian, Fred Armisen and a lengthy list of others. 

2020 looks to be a big year for the Aussie singer/songwriter and guitarist: her self-titled debut has been given a second repress on white vinyl, and the new pressing is actually a new edition that features two new singles — her first two singles, “Greg’s Discount Chemist” and “Listening.”  The expanded white vinyl EP is slated for a March 13, 2020 release through Dot Dash Recordings in Australia, RevolverUSA in North America and across the UK and European Union through Proper Music Group. Geneve and her backing band are currently opening for fellow Aussie singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin on her national tour, which includes stops in Sydney, Adelaide, and her hometown. Along with that, she’s playing at A Festival Called Panama before heading to Austin to play at this year’s SXSW. (You can check out those tour dates below.)

Geneve’s highly-anticipated full-length album is slated for release later this year. And her latest single, the anthemic and grunge rock-like “Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover” is the album’s first official single. Centered around fuzzy power chords, a rousing and enormous hook and Geneve’s pop star belter vocals, the song is an earnest exploration of the grey areas between platonic and romantic relationships — particularly about “how two people might want different things but knowing that that doesn’t undermine the connection you have,” Geneve says in press notes. Of course, the song feels and sounds as though it were written from personal experience — and as a result, it has the ache of confusion and uncertainty over where a relationship stands and what it should be. 

Directed by Duncan Wright, the recently released video plays with gender roles and norms, while exploring the intersection between masculinity and femininity — while at one point showing Geneve being pulled, pushed and shoved about in a variety of ways. “‘Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover’ introduces Carla Geneve visually to the world for the first time,” Duncan Wright says about the video. “The video aims to promote Carla’s bold and unique outlook through a wide range of emotions, vulnerabilities, tension and braveness.”