Venice Beach duo Movie Club released their first LP in 2020 with Black Flamingo, but this August 10th, they’ll be bringing us their new EP, Fangtooth, which marks their fifth studio release since they started playing together in 2018. The instrumental Rock music that they create is compellingly moody, often strongly suggesting narrative elements, which come to the surface in the riveting music videos that the film buffs Jessamyn Violet and Vince Cuneo manage to bring to life.
Many of their most recent videos, like the newly revealed “Trap Door”, featuring a song from the new EP, have been created by Dustin Downing, who seems to like pitting Movie Club against evocative, and sometimes challenging settings. With their previous video “Bones”, it’s an abandoned and desert engulfed water park. With “Trap Door”, it’s the Salton Sea, and more specifically Bombay Beach, with odd art relics to complement the song. But it did mean that both had to crawl into the highly questionable water for filming! I spoke with Jessamyn Violet and Vince Cuneo about their genesis and reception making instrumental Rock, how they got their pandemic albums made with a little help from their friends, and the return to live performances.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I heard about California’s recent heatwave. What season were you in when you managed to film the video for “Trap Door”?
Jessamyn Violet: That was in late February. We’ve done several shoots with that videographer, Dustin Downing, and he’s always down for a rugged adventure. He likes to use drones to get these crazy shots, but you can’t fly the drones if the wind is above a certain level. On our previous video “Bones”, we had to push the shoot back three times because it was so windy. For this one, we picked a random date and went out to the Salton Sea, and the wind was at zero. It was the perfect temperature, even at night. For all those balloon shots, especially, the craziest thing was that there was no wind, so that they look so much better. The universe was really on our side for that.
Vince Cuneo: The balloons basically fly through the sky less than ten feet apart, and that’s a miracle. Since there was no wind, in the opening shot, the propellers on the drone was moving the surface of the water, and creating this super-unique ripple effect.
HMS: There’s definitely a serenity to the way that the balloons in each shot and I hadn’t even thought about how that was achieved. Even a slight wind would have changed all that.
Jessamyn: We call that “production magic” when things align that you couldn’t have predicted. That also happened with the outfits that we brought and how they matched the settings that we chose.
HMS: I was totally going to ask you about that! I wanted to know if the colors of the costumes and balloons took their inspiration from the settings that you used or vice versa. They do really coincide.
Jessamyn: That was more production magic. We wanted to look kind of “thrift store classy” for the shoot because everything out there is so ruined and salty. We thought it would pop. So we gathered five looks together and didn’t know where we were going to shoot. We had never been there before. It was total luck that we found these perfectly matching environments.
HMS: The most amazing match is between your outfits and the black and white checkered booth.
Jessamyn: That was in our Airbnb front yard!
Vince: In Bombay Beach, there are about four places to stay, and we found this super artsy trailer owned by one of the artists who lived there. “The Zig Zag House”. There were art installations and several locations to shoot right outside where we were staying.
HMS: I can’t even process that coincidence. Do you feel like working on “Bones” got you more familiar with working at locations like this one?
Jessamyn: It did stretch us way outside our comfort zone. We even posted one picture from one picture from that shoot on Facebook, and a friend asked, “Is that blood?” We looked, and there was dried blood on a pipe that was sticking out. We were very fortunate that there were no injuries.
Vince: In the “Bones” video, we got to this abandoned waterpark, and Dustin said, “Okay, I want you guys to walk about a half mile out into the desert and we’re going to get you running into the scene.” It’s the beginning of the day, about 90 degrees, and we are sprinting a half-mile to get this perfect drone shot. That was only the beginning of the shoot!
Jessamyn: Dustin is basically the Hunter S. Thompson of videographers. On “Trap Door”, he had us get into the Salton Sea for the first shot of the video. He didn’t even get in himself, let the record show! That sea is pretty toxic.
HMS: Yes, those clothes are not coming home.
Jessamyn: Straight into the trash! Walking in it was swamp-muck, but endless. It’s slimy quicksand.
HMS: Did you know before filming that the footage would be shown in reverse?
Jessamyn: We did. We had seen some reverse footage that sparked our imagination, one being the throwback movie Rules of Attraction. They have all these amazing shots in it, and they felt psychedelic, which fit the song.
Vince: The music video plans come suddenly, and when Dustin tells us there’s a shoot, we draw inspiration from what we have been recently watching. We watch a lot of movies over here. For our last video, “Black Flamingo”, we had a concept for what we wanted to do, and I remembered seeing Phantom of the Opera as a kid, with all the masquerade masks. We checked it out and we found some choreography from it. It’s always about what’s inspiring us and what we thought would look good. Old silent German films were also something I grew up watching, like Nosferatu, with that grainy, creepy black and white.
HMS: It totally reminded me of silent films. Both of these videos are amazing, and both must have been pretty difficult to make. How did you plan the choreography and timing to the music on “Black Flamingo”?
Jessamyn: We worked with Ran Pink on that video and he had a passion for wanting to shoot miniature houses with a kind of macro lens with a crazy, long extension that’s used for medical stuff. He brought that to the table, and we turned it into a Thai spirit house instead of a traditional doll house. We choreographed these dance moves but had no idea where he’d edit them into the video. He made it work really beautifully. He also multiplied us times a thousand!
Vince: A lot of people couldn’t tell that we filmed entirely in front of a green screen, since the house was three feet long and maybe a foot high.
HMS: That must have been really wild not to be able to see any of the setting yet!
Jessamyn: We just wanted the vibe of the song, so we put the song on and did movements that matched the vibe.
HMS: I was amazed to see that you’ve only been playing together as a group since 2018, since you’ve put out so much music in that time. This EP will be your fifth release.
Jessamyn: We are big believers in cranking out material and not getting too much in our heads about it. I think the fact that we are instrumental gives us a little more freedom with the speed at which we work. There’s something about the momentum when no one is the front person. There’s so much music out there, but this is our lifeline and gives us a lot of excitement, so we’re riding that wave hard. We are also fortunate to have a lot of friends in LA who lend us their talents.
Vince: When the pandemic arrived, we just hit the ground running. For our full-length album (Black Flamingo), we found that we had 13 songs and decided to record every one of them. Because we just have two members, we always want to add friends on our recordings. Well, our friends who are in touring bands were at home, like Rami [Jaffee] from The Foo Fighters. He played some organ on our tracks. Our friend Jessy [Greene], who plays with Pink, played some violin on a few of our tracks, and our go-to bass player now, Tim Lefebvre, was supposed to be on tour. But all these people were stuck at home, so we were fortunate enough to be able to ask them to add these. All these people have been so generous and it’s the biggest support we could have.
HMS: I have been hearing that while the pandemic introduced a lot of roadblocks to collaboration and recording, sometimes people were more available because they were not on tour. There have been some really interesting collaborations happening.
Jessamyn: That’s happened with our upcoming EP, Fangtooth, too. Our buddy David Ralicke is a legendary horn player who plays with Dengue Fever. He’s not usually available, but he came into the studio with his baritone sax, his tenor sax, and his flute. He had this rig of effects pedals that he usually runs his horns through, and he put these incredible tracks on top of our songs. He added a crazy depth to this album. He is playing flute in “Trap Door”, which people would never recognize because of the effects.
HMS: Even though an EP doesn’t necessarily have a connection between theme and sound on the songs, I do feel like there are some commonalities on Fangtooth. That might be one of them, his involvement.
Vince: He definitely glued everything together. In our songwriting process, I could sit there and write 80 guitar licks, but I try to keep it simple and let things naturally unfold. We knew that David was coming in and was going to add his extra-special sauce to things, and we were just blown away by how he tied everything together. He’s an unbelievable talent.
HMS: I heard that you two played together live for a while before you started recording. Was the impulse of being a live band the inception of the idea or did you always intend to record, too?
Jessamyn: Yes, we created the band out of a desire to be performing. We had both come out of experiences where it was particularly difficult to perform and we’d been feeling frustration. We’d wanted to be out there playing, in the conversation. We’d been dating for a year already but were nervous to do anything official. Our friend Rami was throwing a party at his studio and we thought, “We gotta play!” We quickly threw together a demo of our first song and sent it to him. He put us on the bill, because he’s awesome. It was our first show, and it was the most magical first show that a band could have.
Dave Grohl was barbequing outside, Robby Krieger from The Doors ended up headlining the whole night. We were born out of the desire to play live, definitely. Then we decided to record a few songs early-on, and we connected with a bass player called “Jesus”, Erick Coomes, who plays with Lettuce. We asked him to join in and he did. We decided to record a bunch and ask all our friends if they were willing to contribute. Now we love both things equally, playing live and recording. But especially making videos as well.
HMS: What was the reaction like asking people if they’d like to contribute to this instrumental music that was Rock-based? Was that considered unusual at all?
Jessamyn: Yes, definitely. I think it still is. As far as we know, we’re the only band who is doing this, which is instrumental Rock, but straight to the point. There’s nothing “jammy” to us, we’re just making Rock music without a singer. But everyone seems to be into it.
Vince: It’s just seemed like such a natural thing. In our lives, opportunities have come and gone because some don’t feel as natural to us. It’s the same with our songwriting, where some months there are lots of songs, some we’re busy shooting music videos. Also with our collaborators, it’s about who’s available and excited at that time. With Movie Club, we really try hard not to force anything, and that seems to have worked in our favor.
Jessamyn: It also seems like instrumental music is on the rise lately, especially with the success of Khruangbin. They are instrumental for the most part and have been getting bigger and bigger. That made us think, “Let’s do what we can with what we have and see where it goes.” In this crazy world full of so much stuff that’s like other stuff, I’d always rather be doing something different than trying to be like someone else. Though Kruangbin are way chiller in vibe than us, since we are more Punk and Garage, their success gave us the confidence that we could boldy go in this bizarre direction.
HMS: Are you going to play some of the new EP songs soon? Though you haven’t really had a chance to play Black Flamingo songs yet, either. I see that you have some 4th of July shows at Yosemite.
Vince: We’re so excited about playing both. We played a private show and played half and half. I pointed out that we played 11 shows in front of people that we’d never played in front of before. The next setlist will have the entire EP in it, though. It’s ready to go.
HMS: Are there any challenges to translating songs recorded in the studio into live performance for you?
Jessamyn: Most of the songs come from jams, so we have the skeleton of the song, but the solos can he hard to pull off on top of that skeleton. Eventually, we may get all the parts in, but we try to play live the songs that are more full even without extra members.
Vince: In terms of guitar, I have a looper pedal, so we’ll try to throw it down and, as Jessamyn in saying, some of it feels more natural. Sometimes we can hold all the parts down and I can add all the layers in. It’s all making it work with what we have. When we first started playing, people would ask, “Where’s your bass player?” Now that we’ve been playing for a while, people say that less, which is partly down to confidence and developing a full sound.
Photo credit: Dustin Downing
