Video: Sextile, ‘New York’

Kevin Bronson on August 3rd, 2023

0

L.A. provocateurs Sextile have been defiantly swatting listeners out of their comfort zone since 2015, mixing a decidedly physical brand of post-punk, coldwave and noise suggesting that the machines have gone native.

Last week, the trio announced that their third album, “Push” (and their first major release since their “3” EP in 2018), would be out Sept. 15 via Sacred Bones. They’d teased the release with the singles “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” in 2022 and “Crassy Mel” early this year.

The album follows a period of change for Sextile. Guitarist and synth player Eddie Wuebben, who joined up with band founders Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto in 2015 when they moved from New York to L.A., died in 2019. Cameron Michel, an early member of the band when it was a four-piece, then rejoined. But the trio spent the pandemic years working on other artistic projects before reconnecting last year.

“New York” is the new single. It’s “a dedication to my former home and birthplace,” Scaduto says. “Cause New Yorkers are really tough, but their love goes crazy.” A hyperkinetic dance track, it’s a sure sign Sextile aim to rewire some nerve endings with “Push,” which was recorded in Yucca Valley. “We talked about how one of the criteria for these songs is ‘Would I be able to actually dance to it?’” Scaduto says of the album. “I don’t think we’ve ever set that criteria before. We wanted to have a record that is just full of dance songs.

“The cool thing with electronic music is that most of the time people don’t know what they’re hearing, but if it’s an inherently good song, they’ll dance anyway. That’s a really fun and ambitious thing to figure out — how to move the room no matter what.”

The video for the new single, directed by Jim Larson, finds Scaduto in a very New York state of mind.

||| Watch: The video for “New York”