Brandon Voyeur is a performance artist. Rather than simply releasing music out in the world and calling it a day, he has manifested a whole larger-than-life persona, a la Thin White Duke. It’s an immolation of character on a level that might make one wonder whether Voyeur wears the role, or the role wears him. It brings into question the whole nature of identity, and who we are from one minute to the next. It may have been a while since we last heard from Brandon Voyeur, as he reminds us with his latest video, he’s “Not Dead Yet”.
“The song came to be at a really desperate time for me right before the pandemic when I realized how long it had been since I had felt anything like Brandon Voyeur. And I just started chanting ‘I’m not dead yet’ for both myself and to yell at clouds/the universe a bit,” says Voyeur.
“The song then just kind of rushed out of me, and was lyrically a meditation on breaking out of a toxic static life, both as an individual and as a nation. Musically I was aiming for repetition and atmosphere and leaning into the fact that I’ve become Marceline The Vampire Queen from Adventure Time with all my bass songs.”
Voyeur explains that the foundation for the video, and even the full of the Not Dead Yet EP are built upon a foundation of a line he picked up from a book on chaos magic: “The only clear view is from atop a mountain of your dead selves.”
As far as ominous statements go that’s a doozy. The concept of our lives existing as a series of frames – the star of our own finite moment into which we are born, frozen, and destroyed before the next subsequent instance takes our place – sounds terrifying, but in reality is likely no worse than seeing embarrassing photos of ourselves as a teenager.
It’s a heavy thought to face at the best of times. Then the pandemic came, and Brandon Voyeur shelved everything he was working on; his projects, his new track, his ideas for the EP. Essentially, his entire self.
“I was supposed to come back to Halifax to start recording in earnest for my debut full length, so that’s been pushed way back.” says Voyeur. “If you wanna make Satan cry, tell him all of your dreams.
“But through some self kicking, I pulled myself out of the rut eventually, and with the help of my partner (who is amazing for helping me while she was recovering from an ordeal of health issues) shot the video in my dark and cobweb-filled shed.”
Both the concept of the video and execution are deceptively simple for its weighty, philosophical subject matter.
“I just wanted to capture this absolutely resentful feeling the Brandon Voyeur side of my brain had towards me and existence all this time, with these phantasmal layers of what’s going on inside – a sort of glazed eye meditation from halfway up the pile of my dead selves. It was done with my gear in my shed with little prep, so it definitely does not have the benefits that ‘Modern Divinity’ or ‘IIV‘ had, but I think that one of the big themes of the EP is still captured here.”
Brandon Voyeur’s new EP, Not Dead Yet, is slated to be released on August 15, 2020.