Burner Herzog
East Bay’s own Jasper Leach of Brasil offers up a debut viewing from his solo project Burner Herzog with the world premiere for the Mike Harris video for “Dark Places”. Featured off the upcoming cassette Wonderful American available July 24 from Death Records; watch as Jasper takes you to the lesser seen locales around the Bay Area while serenading you with some harpsichord forward pop that will encourage you to explore the more obscure nooks & crannies of the places & environments that you think you know. Leach produced the album with Paul Korte featuring guest appearances from friends like James Murphy (of Disappearing People, Kokomo Hum), Blaine Patrick (from Tony Molina Band, Smiles, Violent Change) along with Alison Niedbalski (of Qualia, Inner Ear Brigade) that delivers current day freak beats for music lovers of all varieties.
Jasper Leach has the talent to compose songs that have a transcendent quality that are able to take you to entirely different times & places. Operating on an economic form of plugged-in minimalism; Jasper plays up the Burner Herzog trip to the hilt that will encourage you to embark upon your own urban exploration expedition. Jasper Leach & director Mike Harris take you to locales around Lake Merritt, Mosswood Park, Piedmont Cemetery & elsewhere as a light is shined on the obscure areas that are unbenownst to most non-locals. The harpsichord modern hymn moves in modernist motions to a full-on hand-clapping sing-a-long affair that encourages active participation from all listening/viewing. Burner Herzog celebrates the city of Oakland that Jasper & friends are from while rocking his own cool & eccentric style as an unofficial tour guides to those “Dark Places” that you might not know.
Jasper Leach from Burner Herzog introduced us to the new video with the following words:
This is a video for “Dark Places,” the poppiest pop song on my new pop mini-album Wonderful American. My friend and collaborator Mike Harris—a brilliant talent who has helmed all manner of music videos and films—shot this on remote location up here in the Bay, at a few classics like the amphitheater at Mosswood Park and the Piedmont Cemetery, as well as the backside of Lake Merritt, including a few construction sites we weren’t supposed to walk through. Some years ago, a young lady walked me all the way past the lake’s canals to directly under the 880 freeway, where we stood and gazed at a training building for the Oakland Fire department in a field otherwise populated with abandoned old shacks and debris. That’s my idea of romance. To really know a place, or a person, you have to crawl around the darkened paths.
The new Burner Herzog tape Wonderful American will be available July 24 from Death Records.
