Germany’s PHOSPHENES premiere a striking music video today, entitled “Boy In The Hood.” It’s from their forthcoming album, Find Us Where We’re Hiding, slated to drop May 25.
PHOSPHENES is made up of Julee Bee (vocals and lyrics) and Harry Starbuck (composer and producer). The duo received support from Florian Walther on guitar, while the album was mastered by Rob Murray. Sound-wise, the PHOSPHENES amalgamate electro, pop, rock and wave elements into retro, wistful musical soundscapes reflecting striking textures.
The seed that eventually developed into the PHOSPHENES was planted when Bee, working as a freelance journalist at the time, interviewed Starbuck for a music magazine. Similar aesthetic tastes in music resulted in a friendship that, over time, grew into the PHOSPHENES.
Part of the PHOSPHENES’ allure derives from the fact they are not just a band, but also a visual arts collective, meaning the aural coalesces with the imagistic.
Speaking of the videos, Bee explains, “As PHOSPHENES is our newborn baby, I would say we are very proud of finishing the record and everything that accompanies it – especially the videos. We produced almost everything ourselves – the story, the production design, the filming, cutting and editing. The learning curve here was especially steep but this way everything looks and sounds exactly the way we intended it to.”
“Boy In The Hood” opens with rippling, murmuring synths transitioning to a wave of sonic muscularity that flows and swirls about listeners like a vortex before becoming a dream-flavored electro-pop melody of majestic proportions. There’s a neo-classical elegance streaming from the music, sensuously opulent, luscious, and lush, like sonic truth putting sophistries to rout.
Bee’s vocal tones and colors drift and curl as if discharged from the Empyrean. It’s a voice pale and potent at the same time, faraway yet still proximate, pungent while being fragile.
The video is nothing less than a surreal work of art, exuding tenderness, melancholy, and a kind of stylish timorous reverence bordering on the supernatural. When the four young women walk barefoot into a small meadow, collapse, and then rise again only to evaporate, it’s like watching death transform into the hereafter.
“Boy In The Hood” radiates emergent gravity, shimmering minimalist colors, and the infinite grace of umbral revelation. Gorgeously moving, pensive and mysterious, it’s extremely evocative. The definitive verdict is this: the PHOSPHENES dazzle.
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