Kevin Bronson on September 11th, 2020

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After releasing two sharp albums under the punny name Prism Tats, L.A.-based South African Garrett van der Spek has decided on a moniker that’s a little more familiar. So meet Gary V.

“It was great being Prism Tats for six-ish years but indescribable to finally be myself, Gary V,” he says. “Prism Tats was a moniker that served me well but was always going to be a barrier preventing myself and the listener from engaging with my songs in the personal way that I have always strived for. My music has always been an entirely solitary creation, just me writing and recording alone at my studio Gary’z Place. However now during the pandemic, losing my day job and having nothing else to do to maintain sanity but make music, it seemed obvious to me that the time had come to say goodbye to Prism Tats and embrace the inevitable.”

The first single under the new name, “Eternal Returns (Déjà Vu)” (out this week via ANTI- Records) suggests the pandemic had given van der Spek ample time to take inventory of the world and, perhaps, chart an incrementally different sound. The song is more psych-pop than anything in his indie-rock-heavy catalog and herein he contemplates the difference between what he sees in his “inner vision” versus his “television.” “I had a dream about America / devouring the soul of the world / but now I know,” he sings.

The new tune comes with an equally psychedelic new video. Of the song, van der Spek says, “So easily we forget. So easily history repeats itself. All the while there is infinite possibility, an understanding just beyond our fingertips, just off axis, a distant memory, a feeling like we’ve been here before …”

||| Watch: The video for “Eternal Returns (Déjà Vu)”