Bryce Dessner & Clogs Team Up with Twins on ‘Last Song’ Video
The National's Bryce Dessner loves working with other sets of twins. Last fall he and his own twin brother and band mate, Aaron, debuted The Long Count with twin sisters Kim and Kelly Deal at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and this week they've teamed up with twin brothers Benjamin and Stefan Ramírez Pérez, an animation team based in Cologne, Germany, to release an official video for The Clogs "Last Song" (below). (No word yet though if The Long Count will be released anytime soon – though we've been told there are more plans for it in 2011.)
The Brooklyn slash Australia instrumental collaboration that is the Clogs consists of Bryce Dessner and Yale School of Music pal Padma Newsome. The Clog's hazy Americana paired with airy animation by the Ramirez Perez brothers completes the intimate sound with still life imagery that adorns a whitewashed loft space with ever-changing sketches of eyes, ears, heads, legs and torsos in motion. The sketches appear like faded memories within the space; a hand reaches out to grasp the movement but does not succeed, providing a contemplative reminder of time relative to space.
Featuring the love-it-or-hate-it baritone of Matt Berninger from The National, the song comes from the fifth and critically acclaimed Clogs LP, The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton as well as the most current EP "Lost Songs," both available now via Brassland. BrooklynTheBorough.com exchanged a few words with Stefan, half of the animation team, and it turns out the brothers are familiar with Brooklyn, the rich scene, and the subtleties needed to make this sort of music click.
It looks like you've done work with quite a few Brooklyn bands (Inlets, Pains, etc) — being based in Cologne how did some of these collaborations come about? More specifically, how did you meet the folks in Clogs?
It's more of a coincidence that a lot of the bands we've worked with are from Brooklyn, I think. It's probably also because the Brooklyn music scene is so rich and so many great bands are based there. In the case of Inlets and Clogs, we got contacted directly from their respective labels, because they had seen some of our previous work on the internet. I got contacted by Brassland Records about working on the music video for Clogs just a few hours after our video for Inlets premiered on the internet, so it was great to start right into the next project. The project I did for The Pains of being Pure at Heart was a school project I collaborated on with my friend Roger Dario. We both liked their music and we emailed them if we could use the song for this school project. So it wasn't a commissioned work or anything, more of an unofficial fan video if you will.
Did you pitch the concept or was there an active collaboration with the band?
For the "Last Song" music video we pitched our concept to the band and did some tests on the animation technique we wanted to use beforehand. The band gave us some feedback and their thoughts on it, but granted us a lot of creative freedom with the project overall.
Who handled the editing in particular? Given the delicate pacing in a relatively short song did you find it difficult not to have the animation disturb the overall rhythm of the piece?
We both handled all aspects of the production together. When we were designing the architecture of the space, we already started storyboarding the video and animation sequences, so both elements were developed hand in hand. But even with careful planning, there's always things you have to change or try out differently along the way, so it becomes a more intuitive process.
How important are visuals in music to you personally? Are there any specific examples of you becoming a fan of an artist "visually" before the music?
An early example of an artist we both initially liked because of the strong integration of the visual into her aesthetic approach was Björk. We were 13, i think, when we saw the music videos by Michel Gondry & Spike Jonze and were really intrigued by the visuals and concepts. We also loved the album artwork for Vespertine designed by M/M Paris and it was definitely a big factor that we got attracted to the music behind it. It was also at that time that we started experimenting with video and animation, so it was definitely an early influence on our work.
What sort of music, if any, do you listen to while you're working?
I usually just listen to my iTunes Library while I'm working. When we were working on the music video for Inlets earlier this year, for example, the new Joanna Newsom album had just come out and we we listened to it on repeat for pretty much the entire time we spent working on the video. Otherwise I listen to podcasts when i get tired of my iTunes selection. Ira Glass from This American Life makes for excellent company when I work long nights.
