“I don’t like music and art to be over-explained, and I don’t think it should be,” Alex Cobb recently said to Resident Advisor, who featured his Students of Decay imprint as their “Label of the Month” earlier this year. The most recent album to emerge from the label is Cobb’s very own Chantepleure, which is presented, on the one hand, as “his most optimistic and sanguine musical statement to date,” while also having been recorded “at a time of heartache, isolation and emotional upheaval.” But to take Cobb’s advice, it might be more appropriate to forego an analytical approach and just immerse yourself in the album.
This also goes for the video for “Anselin,” which we have the pleasure of premiering here. With Cobb’s achingly beautiful music paired with John Davis’s nostalgic imagery (fun fact: Davis released the stellar Ask the Dust via SoD in 2013), one might be confident in pinning down the mood here as one thing or the other. But like the album itself, it’s perhaps best to take this seven-minute video as a perceptual experience.
• Alex Cobb/Students of Decay: http://studentsofdecay.com
• John Davis: http://noiseforlight.com/sndmusic.html
More about: Alex Cobb
