Jon McKiel was already headed down a strange path with his upcoming album, Bobby Joe hope. Collaborating with an unknown entity founding in the depths of a second-hand (third-hand? fourth?) Teac A-2340, a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he’d purchased in online in 2015. Pre-loaded with a treasure trove of samples, McKiel decided to embrace this mysterious gift and work with it. Bringing along Jay Crocker (JOYFULTALK) the pair extracted the materials from the tapes to create the an alien counterpart for McKiel to jam along with.
The video “Object Permanence”, for the album’s single, is appropriately just as alien.
Directed by Andrea Thorne, the video eschews reality for an otherworldly experience. The most grounded part of the video features McKiel hacking away at fruit. More uncomfortable moments seem to incorporate some arboreal mishmash of The Ring and the 2015 appearance of Arcade Fire’s giant papier-mache bobblehead masks.
Blessedly, for a tiny bit of trivia that is deliciously oxymoronic, we have some familiar aliens making brief appearances: the vampire cloud from The Original Series Star Trek episode “Obsession” as well as the Beta XII-A entity from “Day of the Dove”. Thorne finally gives us the occasion to bring together the Venn diagram of Star Trek trivia and East Coast music that we’ve been waiting for.
McKiel’s description of the song is even more esoteric: “Magic recombines ordinary objects to wake us; acknowledge mystery. Pluck from the landscape a rose or a bruise. World forms and unforms in universe around us – a moment comes and then dissolves. Tides and life; on the shore let us embrace beneath Moon and tremble a little as lovers and kin while we tumble through time in the wandering place.”
The record is available on Friday, April 24 via You’ve Changed Records. McKiel was due to be on tour across Eastern Canada in support of the new album later this year, but all dates have been postponed due to safety measures surrounding COVID-19.