- Mon, 2011-03-21 11:01
Under the title of NewVillager, Ben Bromley and Ross Simonini make music, film, art and performance art. Between them they have established what they refer to as their mythology; an account of the process of change and of creation, broken down into ten subdivisions. On their website, the band describe this mythos as “a lens to look at the world. It’s a ten-part framework of understanding the process of change. How does an object or a person or an idea go from one state to another state? It’s a question everybody asks any time anyone tries to create anything and the mythology is just our attempt at answering it.”
We’ll be honest with you; we’re not entirely sure that we know what they’re talking about. An extensive examination of their website provides us with one or two moments of clarity, but there’s still a lot going on in the NewVillager camp that’s going straight over our heads at the moment.
Regardless of whether we get them on an intellectual level or not, NewVillager’s music pushes our buttons. LightHouse is the first official single to be released from their forthcoming debut album, released on June 21st, and its buoyant polyphony brings to mind the deep, multi-instrumental textures of Grizzly Bear and the oddball groove of Yeasayer. The video that accompanies it is a suitably bizarre affair, full of people in extravagant get-ups partaking in inexplicable but visually arresting acts.
