San Francisco Bay Area/Brooklyn quartet Late Aster shared a video today for “Can’t Say No”off their debut EP, True and Toxic, out now on Bright Shiny Things, announcing an upcoming performance at Pinnacle Path in Berkeley, CA on July 23rd, 5pm PDT.
The “Can’t Say No” video was created by San Francisco-based artist Deadeye Press(Elise Hochhatler) by animating hundreds of individual, hand-processed cyanotypes: 35mm film exposed via a high-wattage LED bulb and a 1950s Leica Leitz Focomat Enlarger onto a sheet of photosensitized paper. Discussing the video’s creation, Deadeye Press stated, “The concept for the video was inspired by the choppiness of a silent movie and this sort of surrealist concept of representation, that an image or a word is not the thing itself but the representation of the thing. I was interested in exploring the cyanotype photographic process as a tonal treatment to the images because the monochromatic blue is a reminder that they are an exploration of an imagined world.” For more information about the and the cyanotype printing process can be found at: deadeye-press.com
“‘Can’t Say No’ is a musical phoenix,” noted Late Aster’s Aaron Messing. “We wrote a song in 2015 that had parts that we liked and parts that we didn’t. For one of our live shows, we decided to scrap most of the song and start over, but kept the same structure and feel using brass instruments and looping pedals. Out of the ashes of that previous song “Can’t Say No” emerged.”
Messing recorded the synths for “Can’t Say No” on the famed Roland Jupiter-8 at The Vintage Synthesizer Museum in Berkeley, CA. Recording the opening section 20 times using different patches for each iteration, Charles Mueller from the group, weaved all the parts together in the mixing process.
Purchase True and Toxic on limited edition vinyl. The first 20 albums sold come with a one-of-a-kind hand-processed cyanotype, from the “Can’t Say No” video, signed by Deadeye Press.
The members of Late Aster – Messing, Mueller, Anni Hochhalter and Cameron LeCrone – all met while studying music performance in jazz and/or classical at Northwestern University and the University of Southern California. The quartet were quickly united by a love of experimentation, melding brass instruments with electronics, using forms and melodies influenced by popular music to push the boundaries between classical, jazz, pop, and rock. With their sound, Late Aster looks to draw out the intimacy and versatility of instruments commonly relegated to a passive, secondary role in rock music.
True and Toxic is a collection of musical sketches on the modern human condition. Focused on relationships, politics, science, and digital society, the songs string together disparate mediums and influences—digital and analogue, silicon and brass, composed and improvisatory—to create a soundtrack for the polarizing present. Each song is paired with visual accompaniment. Along with Deadeye Press, the group collaborated with Four/Ten Media, Harrison Atkins, and Kelsey Boncato.
