by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
The general unease and societal abandon that comes with anything The Sediment Club do is something to truly admire. They’re making their own brand of weird in the form of abrasive noise rock, skittering no-wave, and frazzled art punk. They’re doing it better than most too. Having released Stucco Thieves back in May of last year (and a live EP last November) with Wharf Cat Records, their album has had time to sink into our consciousness and hatch it’s own eggs to both flourish and fester. It’s equal parts brilliant and chaotic, an album that needs to be explored in great detail to immerse yourself in their nod to inaccessibility.
With a new video for “Hydraulic Saint," directed by Larry Bovick, the band breath new life into the record, a stirring reminder of the band’s deranged charm and caterwauling minimalism. For all the insanity and experimental nature of their sound, the construction remains fairly simple, an elastic riff that rings hard as it’s warped along a ragged rhythm. When we talk about the bliss of unhinged songcraft, this is a perfect example, a song that is perpetually unglued but intelligently built all the same. The video captures the band’s own Austin Sley Julian feeling the anxious energy and passing it on direct to the viewer.
Speaking about the video, director Larry Bovick shared:
““Hydraulic Saint” already speaks for itself. A pummeling one riff song with subtle variations, it’s anxious musings on religion, bodily existence, and the marketplace of ideas is finished in just over 1 minute and 30 seconds. It’s almost done before it starts. How does one translate this into a visual form? Best to answer simplicity with simplicity. A marriage of form and content. Austin’s performative skills have always been a center piece of Sediment Club, so it seemed clear to showcase his singular talents. Are you ready for your close up? The split screen allowed both a micro and macro view of Austin’s multifarious physical abilities - from full bodied contortions to the minute skewing of his lips. Physical comedy meets liturgic pain. The split screen is also an attempt to simulate the schizophrenia of “Hydraulic Saint” that at once seeks spiritual deliverance and yet completely rejects it’s own salvation. Shot over the course of 1 day in Brooklyn, NY, we ate burritos for dinner.”