Category: VIDEOS

September 6 is gonna be a big day for Mommyheads heads. Not only is the art-pop outfit celebrating the 25th anniversary of the stellar Bingham’s Hole with a remixed/remastered reissue, the Adam Elk-led quartet is releasing 10th album Future You. Where the band’s melodic ’70s tendencies were perhaps a little unhip back in 1994 for the self-ordained indie cognescenti, the music-loving world has probably caught up to the Mommyheads and their now-hipster-approved influences a quarter-century later.

One of Future You‘s standouts is second track “Mutual Enemy,” and the video for the song follows the stylistically similar clip for LP opener “Woke Up A Scientist.” Both were directed by Elk and edited by Mitch Friedman. Though “Mutual Enemy” takes a serious look at the current geo-political climate, its video does it in a very entertaining way.

“What better way to tackle it than a video using the stop-motion technique utilizing animated toys?” asks Elk. “There are 60 separate scenes, each taking about three-to-four hours to shoot. That’s 150-200 hours of filming. That said, this video was was a true labor of love to make. Spoiler alert: We give Robert Mueller a chance to tell us how he really feels at 2:16.”

Somehow it all feels a lot fake than what’s passing for news these days. We’re proud to premiere “Mutual Enemy” today on magnetmagazine.com. Check it out now. And if you find yourself in Sweden, Denmark or Norway later this month or the beginning of September, check the Mommyheads out live.

On July 26, Ummagma will release Compass (Leonard Skully), the third album from the Canada/Ukraine husband-and-wife duo and first in seven years. Now based in Ontario, Alexander Kretov and Shauna McLarnon met in Moscow in 2003 and began a romantic and musical partnership. The dozen-track Compass follows two 2017 EPs, LCD (with Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie and Curve’s Dean Garcia) and Winter Tale (with A.R. Kane). One of the new LP’s standouts is lead single “High Day.”

Says McLarnon of the track, “It’s one of those ‘accidental songs’ that were created under odd circumstances. We were going through a tense time, living between two cities and seeing each other only when commuting ‘home’ with our daughter for the weekend. Something happened to cause us to fight; I don’t even remember what exactly and we were not talking to each other, but ended up having a guest come over—another musician. We took turns entertaining him because we didn’t want to be in the same room as each other. I hadn’t been singing anything for a few months at this point, and my husband found me singing with this guest upon returning. He took out the hand-held recorder and captured this improvisation. Later, upon playback, we knew that a song needed to be born, and we at least had an idea of the chords and stylings needed.”

So not only did McLarnon and Kretov get a song out of their quarrel, they also were able to use it to move past the argument itself. “It was a song of apology and awakening,” says McLarnon. “Not to say ‘I’m sorry for what I did or said,’ but to admit how stupid it was that we could both let something so small stand in the way of something so huge—that being us, our music and our family. This song helped us move past this to restore equilibrium in our relationship—and got me singing and writing again. This was our ‘High Day,’ and now it’s your ‘High Day,’ too.” 

We’re proud to premiere the Kretov-directed video for “High Day” today on magnetmagazine.com. Check it out now.

Last year, Beauty In Chaos released debut album Finding Beauty In Chaos. The project is the brainchild of guitarist Michael Ciravolo (Human Drama, Gene Loves Jezebel), who’s also president of Schecter Guitar Research. What made Finding Beauty In Chaos really intriguing, however, was the cast of musicians that Ciravolo was able to bring on board for the LP, including Ice-T, Robin Zander (Cheap Trick), Simon Gallup (Cure), Michael Anthony (Van Halen), Al Jourgensen (Ministry), dUg Pinnick (Kings X) and Wayne Hussey (Mission).

Ciravolo and Co. had such a wealth of material for the album that they created a companion piece, full of remixes and alternate versions. Beauty Re-Envisioned is out tomorrow via 33.3 Music Collective, and this time, Zakk Wylde, Kevin Haskins (Bauhaus, Love And Rockets) and others are also along for the ride.

One of the new LP’s highlights is an acoustic version of the debut’s “Storm,” co-written and sung by Awakening frontman Ashton Nyte. “I wanted to try a stripped-down, more intimate approach to this version,” says Nyte, who also played guitar, bass, keyboard and programed the drum on the track. “This meant re-recording it from scratch, as I wanted to re-sing the vocals in a more introspective way, to match the arrangement I had in my head.”

There’s a brand-new video for “Storm Featuring Ashton Nyte (Acoustic Version),” directed by Vicente Cordero (Room 37: The Mysterious Death Of Johnny Thunders). We’re proud to premiere it today on magnetmagazine.com. Watch it now.