Hateful Chains

Siouxsie on the Beach- video comes out!

It will come out, as soon as I get my producer code for videos!

Meanwhile I'll tell you something about the making of:

I mentioned the song in an earlier post, describing it as a "Cure-song", which it kind of was, because I tried out that specific structure The Cure more often than not uses in their songs. That is, to start with the band playing the basic cord sequence once or twice, then introduce some keyboards, then guitar riff, then maybe another riff... This way the cord sequence gets played multiple times before the verse kicks in. And there can even be another part before the verse. But it stays interesting because all of the parts are not introduced at the same time. We ended up using only four cycles before verse, but the idea is there.

Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Christine" and their cover of  The Beatles' "Dear Prudence" were a huge influence to me at the time of writing the lyrics. As a complement and recognition of that, the protagonist of the song became "Siouxsie". To give the call "Come out to play" a more sinister meaning I put the story in a post-apocalypse world. The chorus simply describes that world with the common symbols of destruction: the black rain, related of course to fallout after a nuclear devastation,  the bloody sea, which is straight from the book of Revelations...

For the verses I came up with the idea of describing the state of things before the end in the first verse, and the state of things now, in the second. As the first line was "before it all came down, we had everything" I decided to end every line like that, to "everything", because why not? And so it became a story of our greed and selfishness, that has destroyed the world as we know it. A lamentation if you will, before the things that it laments have come to pass. Funny thing about major key, in this instance I think it actually underlines the sadness of the subject.

Spain and it's sunny beaches in August were the perfect place to shoot material for a music video, so we used that opportunity. With little experience and just the camera and a basic lens we got some good takes. The weather was windy but sunny, completely in our favour. We had a location in mind: An old Spanish Civil War- era bunker by the sea and the rocks and an isolated little cove around it. We had to climb over the tricky rocks rising from the sea to get there, but luckily there was a local guy to show us the way. 

The idea was to combine beach material with stuff shot at rehearsals. We got the editing done in two sessions. I think it came out nice: Amateur-shooting, which was exactly what we wanted, to give the impression of "Good memories on the beach" and "Fun times at rehearsals", with some colour definition to add some final touch. 

Hopefully the video will give credit to the song and add to it visually the atmosphere it aspires to achieve musically. Enjoy the sweet memory of sun in the midst of darkness!

A negative image of the beach