Video: Jonathan Wilson, ‘Loving You’

0
jonathan-wilson
Jonathan Wilson (photo by Andrea Nakhla)

No one would expect Laraaji and Lana Del Rey to appear on the same album, but here they are on Jonathan Wilson’s third full-length, Rare Birds,” out March 2 on Bella Union. Laraaji, a New Age master musician who also teaches laughter as meditation, lends his voice and zither to “Loving You,” the second song (after “Over the Midnight,” released in December) that Wilson has teased from the album, which features Father John Misty and Lucius as guests vocalists as well. “Loving You” is an 8 1/2-minute, trippy-dippy track, and the video features Laraaji floating through space in his signature orange holding an old TV sideways containing Wilson’s face.

“One day, one of my musical heroes Laraaji came into my studio to just experiment and record some music,” says Wilson. “I had the ditty ‘Loving You’ lying around, (it was a song I wrote from a feeling or inflection of a word I heard John Lennon emote in one of his songs) and I then put down a simple little drum machine beat along with the piano and vocal that you hear now. Laraaji then beautifully chanted over the song, one take … then he played his cosmic zither, undulated gracefully with his iPad, and truly shaped the scope of the track. I then added a specific drum/cymbal treatment used throughout ‘Rare Birds,’ my funky Crumar bass, Lana Del Rey, a few other things and boom that was the genesis of the new album… That song set the tone.”

||| Watch: “Loving You”

||| Live: Jonathan Wilson performs Feb. 26 at The Grammy Museum. Tickets.