by Alex Reindl (@oldjoychicago)
“A life devoted to music, especially music that intentionally seeks to slip between the cracks of more commonly identifiable modes, has never been easy,” says Tim Kinsella, describing the process of recording the new Gimme Altamont EP and it’s companion record Giddy Skelter. The words ring true, but as proverbs all over the world say in one form or another, “nothing is worth having (or hearing) which comes easily.” The result of nearly two years of work, Gimme Altamont is the first full release by Tim Kinsella and his partner Jenny Pulse under their own name as Kinsella & Pulse. Since 2018 they have been collaborating and performing under the name Good Fuck, but since late 2020 they have devoted themselves totally to making this EP and full length. “Replicant Heart” is the first video they are premiering from the EP, and it is a great example of their holistic approach to making music, and the fulsome quality of the music itself, which they describe as “Total Music.”
Before we get to the song and video it’s probably useful to know a little bit of the background. This music was created over a very long process of refining: bursts of creation followed by long periods of reflection. Clearly it wouldn’t be right to call it “Total Music” without there being such a thorough process of creation. “Between Oct 2020 & Feb 2022 we made 60 demos for our debut album Giddy Skelter. Jenny took daily singing and bass lessons and I took Ableton lessons and learned to play guitar in standard tuning for the first time. We made these shifts in our practices to crack our imaginations free from the crust of old habits,” Tim says of the beginning of the album. Over the next several months the songs were pared down again and again until they got to a 19 song double album, which was then broken up again into an EP and an LP, due to the necessities and vagaries of the current music industry. Drawing narrative inspiration from Orson Welles’ final and posthumously released film The Other Side of the Wind, as well as memoirs by Annie Erneaux and Tove Ditlevsen, the demos were consistently refined and re-sequenced during weekly trips to the Art Institute of Chicago; as they would walk through the halls from primitivism to contemporary modern art new ideas would strike and the songs would be re-ordered or changed accordingly.
“Replicant Heart” is the second track on the EP, a beautifully dark and brooding song, eerie and contemplative at times, but also full of life. It opens with Pulse saying “yeah,” and then clearing her throat a few times, as though she’s responding to the engineer that she’s ready to do a take, and then a droning synth slowly fades in, as electronic wind chimes twinkle around the edges of the song’s consciousness. Her and Kinsella trade vocals, hers clear and prescient and his slightly fuzzed out and distant. The song has a narrative structure of its own, mirroring the five act dramatic structure of the rest of the EP and LP, which rewards repeat listens. After the initial swell, the guitars kick in and the bass begins its percussive rhythm. “Daddy’s gloat and brag/ His drunk breakfast/ Family our portrait target practice,” sings Pulse as the song changes again into a swirling breakdown of cascading and artful noise before it returns to the verse with the addition of haunting synth.
The visuals mirror the music in pretty interesting ways as well, drawn from just as many varied sources of inspiration as the song itself. It opens with motorcycles riding in circles, each time a loop is completed another cyclist joins. As the vocals kick in, the image mirrors itself and the cyclists blend, riding into each other in crash-less collisions. Mirrored imagery is prevalent throughout the video, seeming to symbolize duality but also difference. A mirror shows a reflection, but the reflection is never exactly the same as what is being reflected: everything is backwards. There are stock footage scenes from the 70s, men looking into a giant vat of what appears to be meat or bread. There are scenes from early films, haunting black and white figures wearing 19th century costumes castigating each other, dancing, loving each other, all mirrored and blended with the factory scenes.
The shots are cut together rhythmically, and as the music and beat changes so do the visuals. The effect is hypnotic and entrancing. The video doesn’t give form or direction to the substance of the song, but it follows it and provides a visual context for sonic textures. Everything about it works and pulls you in. There is no clear intellectual narrative, but rather a sensory narrative, each feeling compounding on the ones before it to tell a story in a way only music can. It’s not necessarily surreal, but it is certainly dream-like in its quality, and does remind one of The Other Side of the Wind in that sense.
“Replicant Heart” is certainly different from anything Kinsella or Pulse have done before, but it is still familiar in the way half-forgotten old films are familiar. It’s original, but it also feels linked to a collective unconscious we are rarely aware of tapping into. It combines the visual and aural into a sensory experience that is felt more than it is understood, and its power comes from its ambiguity. The range of influences and experiences that went into it are distilled into an artistic essence that is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts, but is more compact and digestible. It’s like having an entire novel mainlined into your subconscious in the span of five minutes. Highly recommended. Check out the video and song here and be sure to listen to Giddy Skelter when it comes out next year.
“...this is what we do and here we are. If we are challenged to summon all the necessary spirit to get it done all from within ourselves, so be it,” Kinsella says, elaborating on what it took to create the record. “We are true believers in music and its potential powers and we love every step of its processes, processes that entirely guide and shape our lives.” Just as a sermon by a preacher who is a ‘true believer’ is always more convincing than those with doubt in their hearts, music made by those who truly believe in its power has a tendency to be at least thought provoking on the low end of the spectrum, and positively transcendent at it’s best. “Replicant Heart” falls somewhere in between, depending on the kind of revelation you’re looking for. But it’s absolutely worth hearing to judge for yourself. Giddy Skelter comes out in 2023.