A psychedelic fugue permeates the sparkling new single ‘Night Off’ from multi-talented Australian musician, visual artist and fashion designer Annie Hamilton. It comes as a tasty appetiser for Hamilton’s newly announced debut album ‘the future is here but it feels kinda like the past’, out on 20 May 2022 through [PIAS] Australia. Our ears were turned late last year with Hamilton’s single ‘Electric Night‘: a stunning entrée to her musical world, and ‘Night Off’ continues to expand the horizons with Hamilton’s acute ear for melody and drama delivering a delicious pop sensibility.
A lush acoustic sound underpins the reverberation and modulation, with Hamilton’s velvet tones smoothing the waters.
Hamilton says of the track:
Nothing is the way that it’s meant to be, the world is ending, but it doesn’t matter because it’s your night off and you’re texting your crush. I wanted this song to capture the energy of sparks flying, the giddiness, the butterflies – full of imperfections but more alive than ever. This song arrived thick and fast one night last year in between lockdowns – I wrote and recorded the whole thing in the space of a few hours. Usually I edit lyrics, rearrange and re-record parts over and over again, but this song had a sense of urgency to it that I didn’t want to touch, so I left it exactly as it was, apart from the later addition of drums by Luke Davison (The Preatures) recorded remotely from his home studio during lockdown.
The accompanying video captures the hallucinogenic psychedelic tremors of the song with vibrant colours and distorted visions. Hamilton says of the video, directed and edited by Jordan Kirk (XingerXanger) with cinematography by Robert Agostino:
I had the concept for the video floating around in my head for a long time but hadn’t quite figured out how to execute it. I wanted to construct a swirling frenzied fantasy world within the confines of a one-shot video set on the staircase of my house, to convey the feeling of hovering somewhere in the space between reality, memory and fantasy. I pitched the idea to Jordan and luckily he was into it – I knew his style would bring the perfect dark, surreal element into the mix to balance out the DIY craftiness of the props. I made hundreds of cardboard cutouts of bats, raindrops, lightning bolts, moths, stars and moons and enlisted a bunch of friends to be puppeteers – the shoot was chaotic and hilarious and perfectly matches the woozy rawness, imperfection and spontaneity of the song.
Jordan Kirk adds:
I love music videos with a strong and simple theme, and I was drawn to Annie’s initial concept due to this. I believe that working within limits helps creativity, and knew that we would be able to stick to her idea, while heightening it with the right lighting, shooting techniques and editing to achieve the crackling darkness and urgency that is present in the track.
There is a dark velvet swirl to the video:
‘Night Off’ is available to download and stream here.
‘the future is here but it feels kinda like the past’ is out on 20 May 2022 and Hamilton says of the album:
It’s about the passing of time – how sometimes it flies by and sometimes it drags on forever and we’re always looking ahead wanting something more or wallowing in nostalgia, stuck in a past that probably wasn’t as good at the time as we remember it… the sense that the grass is always greener. The sense that there is never enough time to do everything that we want to do, or the feeling that we should have done more with the time that has already passed.
You can pre-order the album here and get a special vinyl edition here.
Hamilton also announced a pair of European headline shows at London’s The Social and Paris’ Supersonic:
Sunday 31st July – The Social, London
Friday 12th August – Supersonic, Paris
Alongside the announcements, and as a indicator of her many talents, Hamilton also releases a limited-edition capsule collection of gender-neutral clothing through her eponymous fashion label, available now through her website.
Feature Photograph: Jordan Kirk (XingerXanger)
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