Golden Animals debut their self-made video for “All Your Life”, ahead of their Hear Eye Go album available September 24 from Austin Psych Fest imprint’s Reverberation Appreciation Society. The Brooklyn duo takes the tomes of the past, and sends them through the span of lives flashing fast forward and backward to the tombs of your favorite forgotten rock idol. From their East Coast beginnings, Tommy Eisner, and Linda Beecroft walk down that desert road to find a new, arid vision of alternate existences with a little assisted guidance from Matt Boynton in a cabin located in the middle of nowhere, California.
Their sound wraps the heavy denim of younger days from the East Coast, through those strange Texan roads heading down the 10 West highway for a Southern California-esque psych sensibility. As a 2-piece they bring a chord riff ripping behemoth with Tommy’s guitar cyclone winds and Linda’s unbreakable engine of rhythm. Kicking up dust and a noise typically made from groups of 4 or more; your body moves to Golden Animals’ wild tumbleweed twists and turnpike u-turns, while images of close up news prints, overlayed images of Beecroft and Eisner, past blasts, vintage music box ballerinas sprung to life, and peyote psychotropics of speeding palm trees that pass you by. From Tommy’s lead intro and Linda’s steadfast vehicle of percussion; the bright lights strobe in a variety of patterns, complete with drifting images; as the 2 bring a combined audio/video experience reminiscent of a live production or multimedia installation piece that brings forth the unconsciousness to the awakened surface. We had a chance to reach out to the Brooklyn pair to discuss in detail their melding of sound and vision, and some insights into their album; Hear Eye Go:
How did you both translate “All Your Life” into a dazzling electric video of spinning images and psyched-out-enhancements of silhouettes?
Linda: The video was channeled through riding through the song with closed eyes while the mind electrifies the vision of what your ears are hearing and projecting all those visions in the sky all at once.
Was one of the intents and purposes to make the viewer’s life flash before their eyes via the analogue blasts held over from the golden and nuclear eras?
L: Imagine the song how it would look when you don’t even hear the song. Like transforming audio into visuals. They become very much tied together this way. Both stand on their own. I feel like the song flashes in front of me and leaves me in a sea of colors and movement. I wanted to capture that energy with the visuals as well. I wanna be able to look at them separately and still feel the intensity and beauty of the song.
I love your appreciation of 70s-esque percussion structures. Linda, how did the floor toms become such a big star in “All Your Life”?
L: Thank you. Wanted this to be a train ride through the song while the surroundings change when you look out the window of your train car. The floor tom beat was what came naturally the first time playing through the song. I believe in intuition and a lot of time find that everything is there the first time you hear/play a song.
What are some of the companion piece notes we all need to know about with Hear Eye Go dropping September 24 on Burger Records in conjunction with The Reverberation Appreciation Society?
Tommy: Never worked so hard on perfecting a record before. We set out to make a record that felt like our reality as a band so far . . . Our experience basically off the grid in the California desert and our lives in Brooklyn where we formed and then returned to make this album. On Hear Eye Go we explored complementary extremes we experienced in our lives and tried to present the harmony we see in them: total seclusion and full immersion in society, total peace and total action, love and aloneness, dreams and reality, life and death, the hard and the soft . . . We wanted to present them all at once . . . Things people see as opposing forces as a unified totality . . . This idea also relates to being a duo… We wanted to find ways of being only 2 to create a sound that has more depth than what we may be able to achieve in a larger ensemble . . . Everything we do though is always song-driven, the song is always first. We had so many songs going into this record, but kept editing the record down till it was only 10 songs that added up to a one feeling.
L: On our first LP we had moved to the middle of nowhere in the California desert from Brooklyn and that album was very much about exploring the freedom you find in nature outside of things. We moved back to Brooklyn to make Hear Eye Go and made an album that unifies these complimentary extremes of Brooklyn and the desert. We wanted it to be very active and dense while being very meditative and sparse all at once.
Golden Animals‘ album Hear Eye Go will be available September 24, with pre-sales happening now from Reverberation Appreciation Society on vinyl and on cassette from Burger Records.
