Tag: Video Review: Gone

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: AMAARA Releases Two Gorgeous and Dreamy Videos

Kaelen Ohm is a British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and award-winning filmmaker. As an actor, Ohm is known for roles in AMC’s Hell on Wheels, NBC’s Taken, MGM’s Condor, Lifetime Network’s Flint and several others. In 2018, Ohm appeared in Charles Wahl’s short film Little Grey Bubbles, which premiered at ten Oscar qualifying festivals worldwide, including SXSW. The film was featured as a Staff Pick on Vimeo, earned best actress and best short film award nominations and received widespread praise from critics and blogs across the globe. 

Ohm is also the creative mastermind behind the the multimedia project AMAARA. Upon getting the news that she was cast a series regular in the new Netflix original series Hit and Run, Ohm left Calgary with six songs off her forthcoming album Heartspeak completed. Hit and Run was filmed in New York last fall and was filming in Israel and  was put on pause, four weeks out from wrapping up their first season as a result of COVID-19 quarantines and social distancing guidelines. 

Heartspeak, which continues her ongoing collaboration with Reuben and the Dark’s Brock Geier, is the result of ten days of stream-of-consciousness songwriting, recording and production in Geiger’s bedroom studio. Written completely by Ohm, the material can trace its origins to the British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and filmmaker sitting at the piano or with a guitar first thing each morning until a song was found — with the two collaborating on production and instrumental work, spending each day laying down tracks. Written as a culmination of a life-changing heartbreak and the end of a marriage, the album’s material is a meditation on love, grief, freedom and self-evaluation. 

Slated for an August 14, 2020 release through Lady Moon Records, Ohm and Geier have released two singles from the album. “Awake,” a slow-burning and brooding single centered around shimmering guitar, twinkling keys, a soaring hook and Ohm’s plaintive vocals — and “Gone,” a decidedly shoegazey track featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, thumping beats. And while respectively bringing Mazzy Star and Lightfoils to mind, both tracks come from a place of lived-in grief and heartache, accepting them as a natural part of life that one experiences and learns to live with — and through. 

The accompanying videos were directed and by Ohm. “Gone” employs a simple concept of Ohm performing the song by herself in the desert — but the video features a cinematic sweep that makes its creator seem tiny. “Awake,” features Ohm traveling a surreal and unusually empty New York. And while capturing the experience of wandering New York during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a commentary of on how the jarring experience of realizing one’s own illusion of perfection can be an awakening experience. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sophie Strauss Releases a John Hughes-like Visual for Anthemic and Shimmering “Gone”

Sophie Strauss is a a rising, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and pop artist, who identifies as a successful queer child bride and a struggling indie musician. “Gone,” Strauss’ latest single is a swooning pop song centered around atmospheric synths, blasts of shimmering, reverb drenched guitars, dramatic yet propulsive drumming, an enormous and rousing hook and the Los Angeles-born pop artist’s achingly plaintive vocals.

While sounding as though it could be a part of the soundtracks for a John Hughes rom-com or Stranger Things, the song finds Strauss pushing the creative and thematic boundaries of her songwriting — with the song being one of her first truly love songs; a love song that’s a sigh of elation, full of the understanding that finding love can be extremely difficult.  

“’Gone’ is a new kind of song for me — it’s my first real love song.” Strauss explains in press notes. “There’s this mythology that artists need to be in miserable turmoil to create anything good, and though I’ve always believed that to be bullshit, it was nice to be able to try disproving it myself. Not that the world is short on misery to tap into right now, but being really fucking in love was a neat new place to write from and, especially right now, seemed like a small avenue for some much-needed romance and escapism while we’re all stuck inside.”

Directed by Gregory J.M. Kasunich, the recently released and incredibly cinematic video for “Gone” emphasizes the song’s swooning and nostalgic-tinged vibes: featuring Strauss and her husband Brendan Stephan, the video begins with Strauss’ character in a miserable, loveless relationship that she’s desperate to escape. Seemingly on a whim, she runs out of her house to a local tattoo shop, where she meets a tattoo artist, who immediately catches her attention. The pair begins a love affair in which both parties are swept off their feet with youthful passion and abandon. It’s a much-needed bit of escape and longing for sweetness in a bleak world. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Releases an Intimate 80s-Inspired Visual for Anthemic “Gone”

I’ve written quite a bit about the Toronto, ON-born, Los Angeles, CA-based electronic music producer and artist Robert Alfons and his solo recording project  TR/ST over the past few years, and as you may recall, Alfons has released two critically and commercially successful full-length albums — 2012’s self-titled album and 2014’s Joyland. Alfons’ sophomore album was a decided change in sonic direction for him, with the material reflecting a pop orientated leaning while being club banging.

Five years have passed since the release of Joyland and in that time, Alfons wrote and recorded material in a farmhouse in Southern Ontario and in Los Angeles, where he has since relocated, and worked with an all-star cast of collaborators on his forthcoming two album effort, Destroyer 1 and Destroyer 2. Maya Postepski, Alfons’ collaborator on his self-titled debut co-wrote and co-produced six of the album’s songs. The Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based producer and electronic music artist also worked with co-producers Lars Stalfors and Damian Taylor to further refine the album’s sound. Interestingly, the key ingredient to creating the album’s material — which will be released on April 19, 2019 and in November 2019 — was patience.

“The environment I work in has always guided me. But it took a long time to submit to the kind of patience these songs were asking of me. I was getting glimpses of what I wanted to achieve with the album,” he says. “But it wasn’t feeling cohesive; things weren’t aligning in a clear direction.” Alfons realized it was a question of patience and perseverance. “My first two records were put out so close to one another that I think of them as one,” he says, “They just poured out of me.” With The Destroyer, the process was entirely different. “It was so much more careful. I found myself seeking spaces of absolute quiet; I needed them in order to hear what was going on inside.”

“Gone,” one of Destroyer‘s album singles is centered around shimmering and arpeggiated synths, stuttering beats, a tight motorik groove, a soaring and incredibly anthemic hook — but the song may arguably be one of the most accessible, pop orientated songs of his growing catalog, as it features a swooning and urgent Romanticism that recalls New Order‘s “Bizarre Love Triangle.”

Directed by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Jordan Hemingway and starring Alfons, the recently released video for “Gone” was shot in a cavern in the hills. Employing a visceral intimacy, in which the viewer is sharing a claustrophobic space with Alfons, the video switches back and forth between Alfons bathed in candlelight and brilliant burst of color and lens flare. “Shot in a cavern in the hills of Los Angeles, the music video for ‘Gone’ is a visual homage to an era of music videos I grew up to,” Jordan Hemingway says of the recently released video. “The jarring angles and visuals mixed with vivid color are meant to match the haunting vocals that sit beautifully over an upbeat sound.“ Alfons adds, “Filmed over the course of one weekend, I think Jordan did a fantastic job capturing the feeling of desperation and shame in this intimate video.”