Earlier this semester we posted about New Space, a fantastic new indie-rock-meets-ambient recording by Duchampion alumnus and all-around genius emeritus Ben Seretan ’10, who skipped the Superbowl and hung out in his friend’s Greenpoint studio to record the five tracks. “The whole thing was recorded with nothing more than guitars, amps, and delay pedals,” I raved at the time, “which is especially a feat given how freaking full and textured it sounds, like a loving tribute to the sheer layers of sound the instrument can produce.” (Am I a fanboy or am I a fanboy?)
Today, Seretan sends word of a new video he completed for “What Would You Do If You Were Me?,” his whopping nine-minute opener. As you can see from the embed above, it’s green and hazy and fuzzy and blue in all the right places—a mostly perfect visual counterpart to Seretan’s textured, slow-burning guitar compositions. It’s an all around Wes party, too: the video was directed and produced by Angus McCullough ’10, with mad help from Sam Jones ’10 and Josh Koenig ’09. Check out their finished result here, or scroll on for a very brief explanatory interview with Seretan himself.
What inspired this video?
Angus [McCullough ’10] and I were interested in doing something with really long, slow takes. The length and repetition of the song sort of engenders patience. We also talked about doing something that ‘folded in over itself.’ We wanted to take some sort of idea from the lyrics of the song, but since there is only the one line to go on, or best idea was to have someone “play the role” of Ben Seretan singing the song, toying with the idea of substitution ie “if you were me.” Ben Kupstas, the other half of my new ambient duo Blushing, was sort of the obvious choice. Mostly because we have the same name. Other than that, a lot of our ideas were improvised—oh hey, the space has a disco ball, a full body green screen suit, and a fog machine. Let’s put those in.
Who else was involved?
It’s a very Wesleyan heavy project. The video was directed and produced by Angus McCullough ’10, and was shot with major assistance from Sam Jones ’10 and Josh Koenig ’09.
Where was it involved?
The video was filmed last weekend at No Space, a theater/music/whatever venue run by the No Face Performance Group in Philadelphia. They began at Wesleyan and do a wide variety of work. It was shot over the course of a day (sort of like how I made the record). We were able to edit it together super quick since there are only the two dolly shots throughout the 9 minutes of the video.
As always, New Space is available for free download on BandCamp.