Oh Sees Depict a Day in the Life of a Complicated Cannibal in "Gholü" Video (KEXP Premiere)

KEXP Premiere
09/18/2019
Jasmine Albertson
photo by Amber Knecht

The forever name-changing and prolific force to be reckoned with Oh Sees released their indulgent double album Face Stabber last month. The John Dwyer-led band previously described the 80 minute and 23 second album as "Soundcloud hip-hop reversed, a far flung nemesis of contemporary country and flaccid algorithmic pop-barf.” While probably a joke, it’s not a completely inaccurate description of their experimental twenty-second studio album. With a wide range of genres like krautrock, punk, thrash metal, no-wave, and psychedelic all thrown into a blender, it’s safe to say that flaccid algorithmic pop-barf is nowhere to be found on the record.

Where you may find barf, though, is while viewing the incredibly gory video for Face Stabber track "Gholü." Animated and directed by Leo Nicholson, the video is centered around cannibalistic puppets that mimic the storyline of the song’s lyrics. “One more gasp from a beaten bleeder / One more meal stored in my freezer / Take a lump of that / Take a whiff of that then chew,” barks Dwyer over the propulsive and raucous thrash track.

Nicholson had this to say about the video:

I contacted the Oh Sees after having seen some of their previous videos and having been into their music for a while. I felt like they appreciated the relationship between images and sound, and I found their music visually evocative as well as powerful and driving and heavy. John Dwyer was very open to my pitching ideas and things progressed easily. Hearing "Gholü," its relentless pace, freaky fx as well as lyrics specific to the subject of cannibalism, stood out as an opportunity to create something equally breakneck, pulverising, and challenging. John wanted something that kept to the subject and I built an idea from there. It is a portrait of a modern compulsive consumer with very bad habits, existing in a gluttonous, animalistic loop, comfortable in a world that looks the other way. For a short track, it was a big job with a lot of detail, but in the spirit of the song, anything less than too much wouldn't have satisfied the need to create and destroy.

 

The puppets in “Gholü” were made by Nicholson and his wife Natasha and featured props and sets by Alan Barr with additional sets by Ian Watson and Sarah Edwards. Find more of the Nicholsons' animation work on Instagram and watch the video below..Face Stabber is out now via Castle Face Records.

 

 


Oh Sees will be in Seattle for a two-night stint at Neumos on Saturday, October 5 and Sunday, October 6. Watch their 2017 KEXP in-studio performance below.

 

 

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