The longstanding musical partnership of The Church’s Steve Kilbey and All India Radio’s Martin Kennedy, Kilbey Kennedy return with their ninth studio album, ‘Things We Did On Earth’.
Slated for release on 15 May, the 11-track record’s themes weave through mortality, dreams, and other worlds; whatever you damn like really.
Their creative output follows the pair’s simple approach to music making. Steve calls Martin: ‘Hey we’re touring Tassie, got a few spare days to record an album?’ Martin: ‘Heck yes.’ That’s it.
Martin writes the music and Steve rocks ups to write and sings the words. No argument, no egos, just a matter of pressing record. That simplicity oozes forth on ‘Things We Did On Earth”s lead single ‘Serafina’.
Ethereal, celestial synths seep out, congealing with a sparse acoustic guitar that gleams, Kilbey’s husky but soothing vocals providing a mellowness, the sense of serenity strong.
The song continues to noodle away, the two-chord melody meandering before the song’s sonic explosion arrives, a cleansing that builds a wall of emotive feels that will envelop you.
It’s ambient new wave cocooned by indietronica with elements of shoegaze and dream pop, the guitar and drums entwining, the sonic textures crafted ideal to loose yourself within your own mind, thoughts floating into oblivion.
“It’s my favourite song [on the new album]. Some songs have an urgency to them. When the chorus kicks in, it’s one of those real moments,” Steve says.
Adds Martin: “It’s my favourite song on the album too. It’s so simple – two chords in the verses and three in the chorus. I love simplicity – the less is more cliche.”
Ahead of the song’s release tomorrow (1 May), today scenestr is thrilled to premiere the ‘Serafina’ music video (that Martin directed/ edited). Enjoy.
The video maintains the pair’s abstract aesthetics, Martin building visuals based on the artwork of Christiana Monored. “It’s sometimes hard to interpret Steve’s lyrics literally, so it’s best not to try,” Kennedy says.
“As a starting point I used the album art as inspiration then plucked out a few images from the lyrics as visual anchoring points. I tried to make the video as surreal and mysterious as Steve’s lyrics.
“When Steve mentions animals in his lyrics I added animals to the video, but then thought it was too obvious. What to do? F… it, I added giant cyclops eyeballs to them.”
Usually Kennedy Kilbey collaborate with Red Tape Pictures on their music videos. On this occasion, looming deadlines thrust Martin into the spotlight. “We needed a video fast – we’d left it too late to hire Red Tape Pictures, our usual go-to video people.
“So I said I’ll whip one up quickly, it’ll probably be sh.t but at least it’s not AI! I had zero ideas so I turned to the album artwork by Christiana Monored and thought there’s a video in there somewhere.
“With Christiana’s art for inspiration I finished the video in two days, just in time for our deadline. If there’s a moral to the story it’s don’t leave things until the last moment!”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source scenestr.com.au ’
