Text by Amanda Corbu, GIFs by Jonathan Graves
The Crayon Soul story was written when the songs were nearly finished. It’s not a concept album – the music came first. Think of it as a movie script written from a soundtrack. Each piece of artwork we make for this album, whether it’s an illustration, gif, or an entire music video, is a snapshot from the story.
Once we got the album track list together, it started to sound like a journey to me. Every time I would get to the end of the record, it felt like there was no ending, but a scene where it loops back to the beginning instead. The story itself is a kind of “vision quest in the woods,” set mostly in space. The main character faces a form of death/reincarnation, where he wakes up and has to save the world around him, and find his own identity again. The GIFS below show the beginnings of that adventure.
A couple weeks after we thought of the story, I played “Neon Hallway” for a friend. She described a scene in her head that was parallel to the one we had just written for it. She had no idea that a story even existed. I still get weirded out thinking about it – how could she know!? It was surreal.
Someday later on, we would love to create a full-length music video for this album, like Daft Punk was able to do with Interstella 5555. For now though, we want to tease out as much as we can visually, and give people a chance to experience it on their own terms. We aren’t ready to tell the story in full just yet. My hope is that once people get more familiar with the album, they might be able to tell it to us…
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Album release show @ Mercury Lounge – Friday, August 5 – featuring a Corbu themed photo booth, Corbu themed confetti and more fun!
Crayon Soul is available via Big Picnic on August 5.
