The productive creative partnership between Sam Himself’s Samuel Koechlin and visual artist Stefan Tschumi continues with the video for “Perfect Strangers.”
“He knows places I’d never find in a million years,” says the Swiss-born singer/songwriter, who bounces between his home country and Brooklyn. “So many of our videos start out inspired by a beautiful landscape, anywhere from a Swiss glacier to an Icelandic volcano. This time, we landed in the mountains of Ticino in the south of Switzerland near the Italian border. The place is a real time capsule, which fits the ‘future nostalgia’ theme of the song. There are these tiny, ancient villages that are still inhabited, but almost invisibly so. It’s like a present-day fairytale.”
With grayscale shades of Peter Murphy and Berlin-era Bowie, the delicately intense “Perfect Strangers” is the latest single off Sam Himself’s third album, the self-released Moonsongs, available sometime in October. The LP was recorded at the retreat-like Outlier Inn studio in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Producer Daniel Schlett (Iggy Pop, War On Drugs) does an admirable job of showcasing the two-time Swiss Music Award nominee’s signature baritone, for which “Perfect Strangers” is the perfect vehicle. Perhaps in deference to the exotic locale, the song’s visual component is fairly minimalist, leaving plenty to imagination.
“We usually insert an element of adversity to highlight and increase the tension between the sublime natural setting and the cumbersome protagonist—usually me—trying to move through it on his way to some destination,” says Koechlin.” “This time, it’s a karaoke machine.”
We’re proud to premiere Sam Himself’s “Perfect Strangers” video.
—Hobart Rowland
