Sydney groove metal quartet Red Sea have a new single and video, Hopelessly…and it is one hell of a departure from their usual pace!
Hopelessly… is the first ballad we’ve heard from Red Sea and albeit slower than their usual heavy groove, Hopelessly… still holds true to the band’s alternative, sometimes haunting, sound.
The song is stripped back, minimalist and thick with desire, longing and heartbreak. The instrumentation is about as restrained as heavy-metallers Daniels (guitars), Kelly (drums) and Muhari (bass) would probably ever want and Bowron’s vocals are achingly sensuous and gentle, almost reminiscent of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. Producer Clayton Segelov (Shady Nasty, Sleepmakeswaves, Periphery) has created a sparse, intriguing and delicious soundscape where each note has space and clarity but hints of lo-fi effects create moments of white noise and texture throughout.
Accompanying the song is the band’s haunting COVID19 video. Not your usual “iso video”, Hopelessly… is sophisticated, dreamy and surreal, almost futuristic. Shot in blue-ish black and white and almost entirely in slo-mo, there are dramatic city backdrops and single band members dwarfed by empty streets and soaring buildings. The video was filmed in only 4 hours in the centre of the Sydney CBD during the height of the lockdown in May 2020 with third-time Director (and frontwoman) Erica Bowron and Director of Photography Andy Stavert.
“We were set to make a completely different video, in a pub actually,” says Bowron, “and then COVID lockdown hit in March and, along with the rest of the world, we just stopped. After some weeks, Scott (Daniels) then suggested using the all-but-abandoned city centre. I loved the idea, called Andy straight away and we filmed 4 days later.”
“Seeing places like the Sydney Opera House steps and Wynyard Station completely empty was truly eerie” says Bowron, “one of the best scenes we found was a single Police car in an otherwise deserted Bligh St. We filmed a lot of the dance footage here as well as the opening shot of me lying in the street. The city is usually teeming with traffic and people so being able to dance bare foot in the middle of the street is something that we’ll never be able to do again, I think of it as a ‘time-capsule’ piece of art” Bowron continues, “We knew we had to create something beautiful in an incredibly short amount of time so we followed a super loose idea of locations and then just set out exploring the city with open minds and eyes.”
After the first two visually-rich videos Hurricane and The Art of Transcending from Bowron, and Stavert, the duo have this time created a minimalist, almost sci-fi look and feel. The soaring, frozen, concrete and steel jungle juxtaposed against single human figures. The contrast of the huge, harsh city against warm and alive bodies looking for companionship. The tension of unreleased emotion and unrequited love only seeping in through subtle movements, until the climax of the song when the passion of the music is matched with frenetic visuals…then it all decays back to the same desolate loneliness and ends with the heartbreaking line, “in another life you’ll love me”.
Hopelessly… is the third single from Red Sea’s upcoming Sanguine EP, produced by Clayton Segelov it is due for release Friday, November 6.
