Tag: Sick Feeling

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Collapsing Scenery Shares Woozy and Uneasy “You Already Know”

Collapsing Scenery — long-time friends, New York-based artist and musician Don De Vore (Ink & Dagger, Sick Feeling, Lilys, The Icarus Line and Amazing Baby) and Los Angeles-based artist and musician Reggie Debris — can trace their origins back several years back: De Vore and Debris initially began collaborating in programming events with the Lower East Side-base D’agostino and Fiore Gallery.

Their first collaboration was a video installation, which led to a month of music and visual programming called “Rebuild Babylon.” That turned into a traveling residency series, which led to the duo’s musical project Collapsing Scenery.

Through their multimedia-based work, De Vore and Debris have been passionate about challenging and subverting perceptions in both the worlds of outsider art and political protest — and embracing the joyous, carnivalesque aspects of both. A 2016 artistic residency in New York saw Collapsing Scenery create a psychedelic immersive art installation that incorporated projections, layers of colorful plexi-glass, a reading from Genesis P-Orridge and performances from De Vore and Debris. Meanwhile in a clash of the old and the new, the gallery upstairs hosted a Picasso exhibition.

As a musical outfit, the duo started back in 2013 “in a pall of paranoia and disgust.” De Vore and Debris put their guitars away and began acquiring and assembling as much analog electronic equipment as possible, including samplers, step sequencers, synths and drums machines, and plugged them into a variety of effects pedals.

Their initial writing and recording sessions were largely improvised and were accompanied by Ryan Raspys (drums). The material they wrote managed to express their rage and frustration at the stage of the world, while drawing from punk rock, industrial electronica and techno, hip-hop, free jazz, disco, folk and more. Since they started the music project, De Vore and Debris have been restlessly prolific while also collaborating with Ninjaman, Money Mark, and James Chance among others.

The duo’s recently released Acid Casual EP is the first batch of material released from many hours of recordings they made during the pandemic. And with Acid Casual, the members of Collapsing Scenery sees the pair pushing deeper into sonic and genre experiments while finding beauty — and even joy — hiding within the cracks of the existential dread we’ve all felt in the past couple of years.

“You Already Know,” Acid Casual‘s latest single is a woozy and uneasy song centered around glistening and blown out electronic percussion, a mournful horn sample, live drumming wobbling synth arpeggios, Debris’ dreamily plaintive vocals, a chanted hook and bursts of scorching guitar before gently fading out. Sonically, “You Already Know” seems to nod at Tour de France era Kraftwerk, psych pop, trip hop and psych rock in a seamless and mind-bending fashion.

Directed, shot and edited by Kansas Bowling, the video stars Floyd Cashio, Park Love Bowling, Lo Espinosa and Kathy Corpus in a surreal fever dream fueled by obsession, slow-burning dread, violence. The video features a cameo from the members of Collapsing Scenery as inept and goofy hotel bellboys.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal and Sexual New Visuals for Collapsing Scenery’s “Straight World Problems”

Comprised of Don De Vore, who has spent stints in a number of indie rock acts, including Sick Feeling, Ink and Dagger and others and Reggie Debris, the Brooklyn-based electronic duo Collapsing Scenery can trace their origins back to the summer/fall of 2013, one of a series of summers in which humanity seemed to be inching closer to the precipice of self-annhiliation. And inspired by those particularly bleak days, the De Vore and Debris put aside their guitars, the instruments they’d first learn to play music and on which they were most comfortable and most well-versed, and began assembling as much analog electronic equipment as possible — including samples, step sequencers, synths and drum machines, all plugged into a variety of effects pedals. Interestingly, De Vore’s and Debris’ music and creative process reportedly represents the world as the band wishes the world were: mischievous, polyglot, intense, committed, politically engaged, free, open and without boundaries or hierarchies.

With their initial and recording sessions being largely improvised and accompanied by Ryan Rapsys (drums), the material they wrote together expressed their rage and frustration — and while being an electronic outfit, their sound and material draws from punk rock, industrial electronica, techno, hip-hop. free jazz, disco, folk and several other things, and in way that will remind some listeners of renowned experimental electronic act Liars. Now if you’ve been frequenting this site for a while, you may recall that I had written about “Metaphysical Cops,” a single that reminded me of Soul Coughing’s “Super Bon Bon,” and while it’s been a while since I’ve written about the Brooklyn-based electronic duo, the band has been busy writing new material, which includes their latest single “Straight World Problems,” a propulsive and off-kilter bit of funk that manages to be both radio-friendly and dance floor-friendly despite it’s abrasiveness. While the core of the song suggests an unresolved sexual frustration and desperation, the song as the band’s Reggie Debris explains in press notes is about “the awful frequency with which new regimes and new systems mimic the worst qualities of those they replace.”

Directed by Richard Kern, the recently released video possesses a thinly veiled and unresolved sexual tension between each of the characters — are the members of the band being teased or they are enjoying suffering? Is there more than meets the eye? Hard to tell; but it’s sexy and downright weird.