The northern lights descended over the city this past weekend. It was rather electrifying to walk at night, knowing that a buzz of electromagnetic radiation rolled in ribbons overhead. Although the light pollution hindered our naked eyes, wisps of green appeared on camera, revealing a texture to the night that lay beneath the surface. Weather, with an unpredictability and intricacy that defies our efforts to predict it, has always triggered a strong reaction from artist. Take Matt Mehlan’s latest music video for SKELETON$ next album, Am I Home?. “Don’t Smother It” presents a montage of jarring, automatic natural processes: lightning highlights rippling veins in the sky. Rain falls on leaves; the tree stems quiver and create a visual syncopation in the stillness. Ants crawl over sprawling deserts of concrete. One bizarre shot – perhaps the most introspective – depicts a disembodied thumb mashing the iPhone’s word predict function, producing a poem of robotic glossolalia.
SKELETON$ are an “entertainment unit” from Oberlin. The “$” is a rather vogue amendment to their name, which seems to vary from album to album, although it is primarily the project of the filmmaker and musician/composer Mehlan. He seems like a detail-orientated guy, if that isn’t already evident by the precise, steady pattering on “Don’t Smother It.” A note on the group’s blog details past trials brought on by Mehlan’s ambitious studio explorations:
…the PERFECT PART that doesn’t sound TOO PERFECT - strange unfolding textural patterns and poly-rhythms - wild stylistic diversions - pristine recording quality in a room that sounds good!
The formula seems to have stuck this time around. Mehlan took a fresh approach to an old rock trope in his studio set up: “reminiscent of the classic ’70s epics the band has always aspired to: extended, uninterrupted recording time, studio as instrument and compositional tool, excess and experimentation.” The resulting compositions are dynamic, multi-part suites that combine the best indie tendencies towards baroque, dramatic instrumentation, and a parallel motif of dense, kaleidoscopic drones.
Am I Home? can be pre-ordered from Shinyoko records in the United States and from Altin Village in das EU.