Beach Arabs - "Drifters"
Music: "Drifters" by Beach Arabs
Video editing: Augusto Lima
Footage: Prelinger archives
Video editing: Augusto Lima
Footage: Prelinger archives
Liz::
"Drifters" was the last, and in my opinion, the best song written for "Wild Movement," the Beach Arabs' second album, released September 2013 on Mouca/Acuarela records. I wrote the song in 2012 and it was inspired by three different guitar riffs from three different songs: the Nerves' amazing "Hanging on the Telephone" verse guitar riff, the chord voicing of the intro to the greatest Cure song ever, "Fire in Cairo" and lastly the main hook/intro riff of "And Your Bird Can Sing" by the Beatles.
All three inspirations morphed into their own unique new elements pretty different from their original forms when the song was actually written.
The lyrics are about the ever increasing entropy of life and how much I hate it; how, scientifically things only expand, separate and blur instead of focusing, centralizing, minimizing and creating a sense of grounding. Of course, that's only how I felt at the time, and perhaps everything goes the other way later on, but it is a running theme of anxiety. So, the songs about things not going as planned due to this entropy and steady detachment/separation of things from each other, and how the idea of patience seems like a stupid and futile solution for the problem.
Lastly, the lyrics sort of attempt to rebel against that idea in claiming, "Everything happens now and here," thus implying that any ties to the future are pointless because of that entropy, so living "in the moment" is important, I guess.
"Drifters" was the last, and in my opinion, the best song written for "Wild Movement," the Beach Arabs' second album, released September 2013 on Mouca/Acuarela records. I wrote the song in 2012 and it was inspired by three different guitar riffs from three different songs: the Nerves' amazing "Hanging on the Telephone" verse guitar riff, the chord voicing of the intro to the greatest Cure song ever, "Fire in Cairo" and lastly the main hook/intro riff of "And Your Bird Can Sing" by the Beatles.
All three inspirations morphed into their own unique new elements pretty different from their original forms when the song was actually written.
The lyrics are about the ever increasing entropy of life and how much I hate it; how, scientifically things only expand, separate and blur instead of focusing, centralizing, minimizing and creating a sense of grounding. Of course, that's only how I felt at the time, and perhaps everything goes the other way later on, but it is a running theme of anxiety. So, the songs about things not going as planned due to this entropy and steady detachment/separation of things from each other, and how the idea of patience seems like a stupid and futile solution for the problem.
Lastly, the lyrics sort of attempt to rebel against that idea in claiming, "Everything happens now and here," thus implying that any ties to the future are pointless because of that entropy, so living "in the moment" is important, I guess.
Augusto::
There was no video for “Wild Movement”, one of my all time summer favorite albums!
When Liz Hogg told me she was coming to Europe in July, we thought it was the time to do it. Almost one year later, the album feels as fresh as at the first day and i always wanted to make a video for “Drifters”.
Liz told me how much she liked the old, scratchy, doomed look of Crystal Shipsss´ “Screaming Teens” so I dig again into the Prelinger archives and selected 34 movies in the time period between 1936 and 1976. These films were covering very different moods for summer- from “Everywhere but Here”, where we can see how teenagers want to leave home and boredom, to the heavy days of the construction of the World Trade Center in New York.
The main idea was to create a frenetic collage between Television commercials, Aruba vacations, educational “Good Grooming for Girls”, “Data Processing Division” video documents, Willow Grove Park footage, the “Deaf Youth Group” dancing parties and deliver it as a whole of an hysterical approach to my own perception of the “Drifters” song. and the upcoming summer.
And here it is!
There was no video for “Wild Movement”, one of my all time summer favorite albums!
When Liz Hogg told me she was coming to Europe in July, we thought it was the time to do it. Almost one year later, the album feels as fresh as at the first day and i always wanted to make a video for “Drifters”.
Liz told me how much she liked the old, scratchy, doomed look of Crystal Shipsss´ “Screaming Teens” so I dig again into the Prelinger archives and selected 34 movies in the time period between 1936 and 1976. These films were covering very different moods for summer- from “Everywhere but Here”, where we can see how teenagers want to leave home and boredom, to the heavy days of the construction of the World Trade Center in New York.
The main idea was to create a frenetic collage between Television commercials, Aruba vacations, educational “Good Grooming for Girls”, “Data Processing Division” video documents, Willow Grove Park footage, the “Deaf Youth Group” dancing parties and deliver it as a whole of an hysterical approach to my own perception of the “Drifters” song. and the upcoming summer.
And here it is!
