Rich Aucoin’s “Eulogy of Regret” is practically a manifestation of the circle of life; not exactly what Sir Elton was getting at, but a song commissioned for an autobiographical short film which would, in turn, be re-cut and upcycled as Aucoin’s music video for a song about seizing the day.
The song appeared on Aucoin’s album United States (2020), an album which he wrote entirely while travelling across America via bicycle, with one exception…
“I’m excited to share this video and finally release this track as a single. This was the last track written for United States and was the only one not conceived somewhere while on the bicycle. I wrote it for director/musician/multi-disciplinary artist Dustin Harvey,” says Aucoin.
“Dustin hired me to write a 7-minute version of the song for a short film/theatre piece he was working on called How Quickly Things Change. I liked the song and ended up cutting a track for United States so ‘Eulogy Of Regret’ could take its place.
“Now, full circle, Dustin and his team have made a shorter piece which also doubles an appropriate music video for the song. Some excellent animation by Aiden Searle and acting by Stephanie Yee.”
Harvey’s How Quickly Things Change is a “hyper-biographical” multi-disciplinary theatre piece that is performed in reverse, filmed with the camera barely ever budging from a close capture of the principal actor, then reversed again and sped up to convey a narrow focus presented in chronological order. The whole ordeal is a closely choreographed sixteen minutes or so The final product, combined with the animation by Searle, makes for a far quicker-paced music video, albeit significantly more abstract. It’s worth taking the time to watch the longer piece to understand the context outside of the extreme close-up seen for most of the video.
Rich Aucoin’s United States is currently available, however, on April 23, a Deluxe Version is being released via Haven Sounds that includes three new remixes of album tracks from Double A, Steve Bays and Shmu, and a bonus disc featuring instrumental versions of all the album tracks.
“I’m really excited to include the album with these remixes as well as releasing all the instrumentals for the first time,” says Aucoin.
“Howie Beck’s (Charlotte Day Wilson/River Tiber/Feist) mix really shines in the instrumentals too. It was great to work with someone on back-to-back records as we’ve got a great workflow established. Since I wrote this record on my bicycle to demo versions of these instrumentals while cycling across the United States, people can now hear what I heard over and over again as I figured out the lyrical content while observing my surroundings in 2018.”