Daiana Feuer on January 8th, 2018

0

In addition to Surf Curse, his minimal two-piece band with Jacob Rubeck, Nicholas Rattigan has been putting out solo material under a variety of names, including The Nicholas Project and Tele/Visions, before settling on Current Joys. His fifth solo album, “A Different Age,” will be released March 2 by Danger Collective Records. Written, performed and mixed by the artist using sparse instrumentation (with the exception of BOYO’s Robert Tilden, who helped record “Become The Warm Jets” and “A Different Age”), Rattigan started working on the album in 2015, and it took three years to complete. The songs reflect his experience moving from Reno to New York to Los Angeles, while also touring with Surf Curse.

Rattigan created videos for all nine tracks on his “visual album,” taking inspiration from his favorite films by German new wave director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Belgian art-house filmmaker Chantel Akerman. He says, “The main ‘story’ behind the videos stems from the “Fear” video, shot in my practice space and through the lens of me writing/recording a song. When the camera moves the people in the room act as the projections of myself and my life which influence those feelings. Each video explores those themes a bit more with the associated people from the room.” Today, he’s shared both “Fear” and album opener “Become The Warm Jets,” which references Brian Eno’s “Here Come The Warm Jets.” He says, “It was important to make the characters faceless so the audience could take away different meanings, however, the video itself is latent with personal artifacts from my past… Nostalgia can satisfy us with temporary comforts, but we are eventually consumed by the warm jets we surround ourselves with, unable to relate to the present.”

||| Watch: “Fear”

||| Also: “Become The Warm Jets”

||| Live: Current Joys plays March 9 at the Lodge Room. Tickets.