VIDEO PREMIERE: Jordan Galland’s ‘Dangerous Star” Makes For Haunting Grooves & Classic Video Paranoia

Jordan Galland’s latest album New Rebels (out May 18th) inhabits the soft-focus reality between late night and early morning. Squinting at inevitability through a neon haze, the record is languid and world-weary, suffused with a sublime melancholic beauty.

Though currently most known for his work as a filmmaker, Galland acquired a modicum of notoriety fronting late ‘90’s act Dopo Yume. Though his film work eats up his daylight hours, Galland is a prolific creator and has been making music continually for the bulk of his life. With his band Dopo Yume he toured the U.S. opening for Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright. After Dopo Yume, Galland and Domino Kirke signed to Mark Ronson’s label and released the LP Adults Only in 2008. Galland went on to release two full-length solo records and three EPs. New Rebels is his sixth solo release.

Written in his home in Brooklyn, New Rebels was recorded in the same tiny room in his parent’s Manhattan apartment where Galland made his first 4-track recordings in 1996. He did most of the tracking solo, using the same instruments he used 2 decades ago. Longtime collaborators Jonny Dubowsky (Jonny Lives / guitar) and Kyle Olson (drums) join Galland on a handful of tracks, and producer / mix engineer Charlie Klarsfeld (The Americans) handled a few special guitars, keys, and select drum programming.

In a trick of accidental temporal witchery, during the process of making New Rebels Galland followed his muse into some dark waters without truly knowing why, only to find out the meaning as the record neared completion. “I wrote most of the songs before the election, but it took a long time to finesse the demos into the album versions,” Galland adds. “Back then, I remember telling friends ‘I’m writing a lot of very depressing songs, and I don’t know why.’” While seeing the process initially as a rumination on the impact of technology and social media on human interaction “after the election all this shit bubbled to the surface, and these songs I had written took on a new meaning. I would work on them, and I felt sort of comforted by them, as if I had penned them for my future self.”

Glide is proud to premiere the video for “Dangerous Star,” (below) a provoking composition that is part divine synth pop and part brainy electronica. Galland has molded a video that would fit ideally in the golden age of MTV right next to Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” and The Cars’ “You Might Think.” Read on below for Galland’s thoughts on the track….

“Dangerous Star is a bit of a David Lynch-inspired song, partly because it’s got those feel-good 1950s pop song chords, tweaked in the production to have a darker, spookier feel,” says Galland. “Lyrically, I’d been reworking it for many years, trying to do a “warning” song about an exciting but perilous individual, following in the tradition of a long list of songs like ‘Man Eater,’ ‘Gimme Danger,’ ‘Bad Medicine,’ ‘Poison’ and ‘Dangerous Type.’ But I wanted the song to be less one-sided, put less blame on the girl, and so I tried to find a balance in the story.”

‘The idea of a Dangerous Star has the double entendre of a comet that’s headed for earth, or a beautiful thing that you only see at night, but also, in today’s media frenzy, making someone a star is dangerous… because of what they can do one they have all that power that stardom brings. So I was kinda playing with all these different ideas. The video is inspired by those scene in Eyes Wide Shut of Tom Cruise just walking alone at night, thinking about love and betrayal getting paranoid because he thinks someone is following him. It was shot by Adrian Correia, the cinematographer who shot my film Ava’s Possessions, and the producer of the record, Charlie Klarsfeld and his wife Lolita make a cameo as the first couple kissing on the steps. It is literally my walk home from the subway to my front door in Brooklyn.”

Photo by Heidi Hartwig 

Pre-order:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/new-rebels/1349510907

Links:

twitter: @jordangalland
instagram: @landofgal
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