Category: VIDEOS

Out tomorrow, 4 is the fourth proper album from Big Black Delta. (You can order it here.) For those of you scoring at home, Big Black Delta is multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Bates, frontman of Mellowdrone as well as an early collaborator with M83.

In the time between BBD albums, Bates has gotten sober and attempted to get his life back on track, going as far as scrapping all the music he was working on prior to quitting drinking in order to start again. The result is 4, a dozen-track LP that’s quite ambitious in its scope. The latest single from the album is “Vessel,” whose excellent video was directed by Warren Kommers (Fitz And The Tantrums, Twenty One Pilots).

“When approaching Warren about doing something for this song, he and I were both at points in our lives where we were revisiting past failed relationships and our responsibility in their failures,” says Bates. “I sent him the song, which is about me owning up to my victimhood. A few days later, he had a complete pre-visual and the whole video laid out. It was a fabulous experience watching it start from a vision in his head to the final edit.”

We’re proud to premiere the video for “Vessel” today at magnetmagazine.com. Watch it right here, right now. And read our new Q&A with Bates after the jump.

Continue reading “MAGNET Exclusive: Big Black Delta’s “Vessel” Video”

Over the past decade, the Dirty Clergy—after a handful of lineup changes, it’s now the trio of vocalist/guitarist Brian Manasco, bassist Ky Carter and drummer Cody Moorehead—has made the transition from a folk-oriented duo to a full band exploring a crisp garage-rock sound infused with lots of shoegaze touches. It all comes together brilliantly for the the Birmingham, Ala., group on the dozen-track In Waves (Cornelius Chapel), which ambitiously clocks in at almost an hour.

“Whiplash” is the fourth single/video from In Waves. “It’s a song where the title came first, and I just wrote around it,” says Manasco. “It’s basically the end of a relationship when things are mostly fine during the day. Maybe because there are more things and people to keep you occupied. When the sun starts to sink, things slow down, everything starts to come back to perspective: ‘The feeling begins when the sun goes down/The stealing of hearts and the inevitable dead sound.'”

The Cinepros-directed clip for “Whiplash” is one that any fledgling musical outfit can relate to. “I wanted the video to be like a new band playing one of their first performances,” says Manasco. “Most of the time, there’s a handful of people there and the bartender. I think Cinepros captured the atmosphere of that pretty well.”

We’re proud to premiere the video for “Whiplash” today on magnetmagazine.com. Watch it right here, right now.

The Land That Time Forgot is the latest from rock ‘n’ roll lifer Chuck Prophet, out August 21 via Yep Roc. Will it be “essential new music” like its predecessor, 2017’s Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins? If album track “Nixonland” is any indication, there’s no doubt about that. The California native and longtime San Franciscan couldn’t afford the always-rising cost of living in his hometown, so he relocated to upstate New York and recorded The Land That Time Forgot. But have no fear: Prophet still has the Golden State on his mind, especially on “Nixonland.”

“My family did used to go to San Clemente on vacation,” says Prophet. “Camping there under the stars. Hunting for grunion at night under a full moon. Grunion hunting is a trip and a half. Running along the shore at midnight under a full moon with a bucket. You can see the waves glitter and sparkle with these silvery little fish as they wash up on the sand. I remember a Secret Service guy stopped us as we were running along the shore. I looked up and could see it, high on a cliff: Nixon’s ‘Western White House.’ I also remember a field trip in fourth grade to a place in La Habra, Calif., that had a plaque that read something like, ‘This was once the site of Richard Nixon’s first law office.’ Yes, yes, your tax dollars hard at work. He was everywhere! I actually looked that up. Googled it. Afraid that I may have dreamed that up. It’s true. It happened. The building is now gone, but they took some bricks from it, and the plaque is still there. Here’s proof.“

Guess we do still have Nixon to kick around. We’re proud to premiere the Nathan Golub-animated/directed video for “Nixonland” today on magnetmagazine.com. Check it out right here, right now.