Los Angeles avant-garde/post-punk/synth punk trio
Automatic have premiered the video for their new single "
Venus Hour".
The song is taken from their forthcoming sophomore album '
Excess', set to be released June 24th via Stones Throw Records. Get it
here.
Automatic’s Izzy Glaudini originally wrote “Venus Hour” as an ode to “psycho-feminine energy”. The song is “about whatever it is inside you that makes you want to do that thing that isn’t logical, or safe.”
In “Venus Hour,” desire is a double-edged sword, an impulse that can result in addiction. Excess, rides the imaginary edge where the 1970s underground met the corporate culture of the 1980s – or, as the band puts it, “That fleeting moment when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream, all for the sake of consumerism.” Though the album grapples with contemporary concerns – the exodus of the super rich from an uninhabitable Earth, the precarity of the art life, Gen Z inheriting the planet at the eleventh hour – the album’s final message is one of solidarity rather than despair.
The “Venus Hour” video, directed by Sylvie Lake, also slips between the decades, with each member of the band representing a female character from a different era: 1930s (Izzy), 1960s (Lola) and 1990s (Halle) – all seen through distortion and mirror images that visualize the song’s themes of performance and gender identity. Inspiration came from Thoroughly Modern Millie (Lola), Peewee’s Playhouse on VHS (Halle), and The Tales of Hoffmann (Izzy). The video was shot in iconic Californian locations: Izzy dances with two sculptures at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Lola is shown at Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall in L.A., and Halle walks through the Niki De Saint Phalle sculpture garden.
Watch/listen below.
