Movie Club are an instrumental Rock duo from Venice Beach, California, who are always coming up with new and inventive ways to explore the possibilities of their music and its intersections with visual and dramatic art. Earlier in June, they released a new EP, titled Black Mamba, that presents three new tracks, recorded and mixed by Mike Kriebel (Oh Sees, Ty Segall), and featuring bassist Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie) and David Ralicke (St. Vincent) on baritone sax. The EP is also closely tied to their first wholly independent video venture, a nine-minute double feature for their tracks “Python” and “Black Mamba”, and there will also be a limited edition 7-inch vinyl pressing.
Jessamyn Violet is also an author whose second book, Venice Peach, just came out, while Vince Cuneo also helms a project called Portraits of Pirates, and their various interests have helped them put together a multi-media event called The Psychedelic Circus, which draws in artists from various fields, often close to home in Venice Beach. I spoke with Jessamyn Violet and Vince Cuneo about the making of the Black Mamba EP, and the deep motivation they had to bring their double feature video to life while supporting those songs.
As usual, you all have several related projects and releases going on at the same time, from the release of the EP, to the release of the double video, to a book release for Jessamyn, to a tour, and a new Psychedelic Circus run coming up.
Jessamyn Violet: I try to see the tour as a vacation, even though we’re playing 8 out of the 9 days on tour. It’s a better framework! Getting out of LA is essential sometimes.
It must be good to narrow things down and just focus on performing for a while.
Jessamyn: Totally, and that’s the best part. You feel like you’re actively living your art for a small window of time. That’s all you really do aside from driving, eating, and sleeping. We’re very grateful that it worked out. It’s harder than ever, but also sometimes the universe opens up a window for you. We’re pretty stoked.
Vince Cuneo: When we push this hard, when the performance comes, there’s no room for nerves, even though some people get nervous. We just get up there and enjoy it, because that’s why we do this.
Jessamyn: We have to enjoy it!
It’s kind of like at Christmas, when the parents have done all the work, and the kids are having fun, but the parents have to say, “We better enjoy this too!”
Jessamyn: [Laughs] Yes!
The phrase that you used, “harder than ever”, sounds very familiar. That’s almost exact phrasing to what I hear from many artists, particularly this year. But, in the face of that, I see all the amazing work they’ve managed to do. For most people, it’s not a question of backing down. But we have to acknowledge the extra difficulties and the extra weight that people are carrying as they try to dig in and do new creative work right now.
Jessamyn: I think that’s so important to get that message out, in general, to non-artists. The best that this country ever was, I feel, was when the art was in full bloom. There was a sweet spot. There are a lot of tools these days, but there’s also a lot of overwhelm, and the catastrophic headlines can really bury a lot of great stuff happening. I think that’s the main thing that we’re up against. To me, art is essential, and to everyone, it kind of is.
Anyone who doesn’t think art is essential, they should try quarantining for a year without art. That’s basically the definition of jail. That’s how essential art is, but people don’t even recognize that. But when you are an artist, you feel like you have to keep going no matter what. So it is important to let people know that it is more difficult than ever, in certain ways.
Vince: For us, it’s been navigating what your budget it, and what we can do ourselves. We are huge collaborators and love to work with other people, and we’re very into movies, so we’re always talking video concepts. In the last few years, we’ve come up with at least ten, but the creativity and budget haven’t meshed. So what do we do?
We just need to make music videos, so Jessamyn came up with this idea. We both had concepts, and we wanted to collaborate on something, and then we watched Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’ double feature film, Grindhouse, which was very ambitious. That whole idea is a classic film.
I saw it! I thought it was great.
Vince: It’s so good! Jessamyn thought of the idea that we each got to write and direct a film that the other person would act in. It made it really fun! They somehow ended up blending together. We did the same thing that Tarantino and Rodriguez did, which is that we opened up with a kind of preview, which is also kind of a preview of Jessamyn’s book. Then we go into the “clown” video where Jessamyn made me dress like a clown and jump around Venice for a couple of days! That was very fun, but the best thing about that was that people didn’t say, “I like your costume.” In Venice, they say, “I like your outfit!” [Laughs]
And with the whole makeup too! It wasn’t just funny clothes. You were full-on.
Vince: And then, I’ve always wanted to make a Tarantino-style mobster film, and I didn’t necessarily have to be in it. Jessamyn got to be the assassin. That has always been a dream of mine, to bring something like that to life. I’d been watching a bunch of Tarantino films, and reading a bunch of Tarantino books, so I said, “Jessamyn gets to be the badass.”
I love the long coat and the samurai sword. It goes in for the striking visual, and the psychological feeling of that. I also really like that you could command each other around within your individual spheres. There’s autonomy in each video.
Jessamyn: It’s great. It’s kind of one of the principles that our band operates in, too. I do the drums, and he does the guitar, and we don’t tell each other what to do. It creates less friction that way. It’s also more fun when you feel free like that, and no one has a certain idea of what you should be doing.
I feel like a person might well go even further creatively, and try new things, in that situation, because it’s so wide-open.
Jessamyn: Right! And at the end of the day, you’re just not trying to be precious. There is no room for preciousness anymore, so just have fun with your art if you can. If you can, get a certain vibe across, and that’s a feat in itself.
I absolutely agree with you on that. I meant to comment on your point that the news cycle is drowning out the news of creative work that’s being done. If that is like an eruption all the time, how can people hear about other things? I feel that just as a reader looking for articles about art sometimes. It’s the landscape of being alive in this country right now.
Jessamyn: Yes, it feels so systematic. There’s the common phrase that you hear from people, “I don’t feel anything.”, or “I’m numb.” It’s the natural response to being hit by so many terrible things, that you just shut down. It makes it harder to make an impact these days, but as an artist, making an impact, and making people feel things, is the core of your job. We talk about that all the time.
You have to drill through that state to get to people.
Jessamyn: Artists are doing back-flips these days to make an impact. It becomes a game of sustainability and thinking outside of the box budget-wise. But we are 80s babies and we have a lot of experience being creative and aren’t glued to a particular way of doing things. I’m curious how that’s going to translate to the younger generation in the art world.
Vince: You watch rockers age and see how they deal with music as they get older, and some burn out, but I think the way we combat things is just to get in a room and make music. Just the relative passion of doing it is what I think is the most important thing. I can sit there and work on something, and the practice of doing something, and feeling good inside, is still going to translate to people, no matter what.
I love playing the guitar, and if that connects to one person and inspires them, that’s still an important thing, and I think that’s harder for people to realize with everything happening. It’s almost like art is our weapon, with everything else happening.
I think of you as being naturally inclined to doing soundtracks, so making these videos also feels like the completed circle. You made the films that actually go with your musical soundtracks here. How did you decide which songs should go with each of the stories?
Jessamyn: I think we were both most partial to these two songs of the EP and Vince wanted his assassin video pretty badly, so it just seemed right that he’d get the driving, fast, aggressive track.
That’s so true.
Vince: It’s funny, because we’ve also been watching David Lynch films, and in my mind, I wanted these very slow shots without much happening. The music changes that. My song is very erratic and crazy, and so we did a whole day of shooting, and I had to double-time the footage, just to get everything in there and to match the music. So my initial idea of slow, cinematic shots didn’t work with that song.
I noticed that it was sped up. Even when Jessamyn’s walking, it feels like a stylized fast-forward movement.
Vince: I wanted it to be that way, but I also wanted it to be like in horror movies, where everyone is running, but the murderer is always walking slowly. So I said, “Jessamyn, don’t run! Just walk!”
Jessamyn: That was music to my ears!
Yes, it feels relentless, like there’s a scary relentlessness to the central figure. They are always going to catch up, no matter what you do.
Vince: It was pretty ambitious, but I knew that it was going to be sped up. The biggest thing for me was that I wanted a classic car, and an elevator, like the beginning of Pulp Fiction shot, and I had a friend who had a 90s Figaro.
That car is like a character too! I kept staring at that sea-green color. It’s mesmerizing. I noticed the contrast between the two videos because that one, for “Black Mamba” has the street views and the elevated views. Whereas the video for “Python” is set on foot, and close to the ground.
So visually, they feel very different. The on-foot version has the graffiti, the water feeling more visceral, the sand, all that. It’s very tactile. Then the faster movement and ease, and the shopfronts, and views, are in “Black Mamba”. Both the songs and the videos feel inverse. I like that contrast.
Vince: That’s the fun thing about being instrumental, that there really, truly, are no rules. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to be exciting. I remember when we were writing “Python”, it was this slow, super-slinky thing, and chill, then Jessamyn said, “Let’s go into this fast, Punk part!”
It’s like what Jessamyn was saying, that with every idea that we have, we have to digest and consider it fully. In my mind, that wouldn’t have made sense, but I said, “Let’s try it!” And when we played it, it was really exciting, and I thought, “Wow!” When we play the shows now, there are at least five people who go “Woo!” when we hit that part. Now, it’s one of the most fun songs to play because it’s all of the Movie Club elements in one song.
That is really fun and surprising when that song drops into that other zone and blows your hair back.
Jessamyn: In the video, that’s when the Clown finds a friend, and a neighbor.
That’s right! And you don’t expect them to get along, either. I like how that video subverts expectations at various points.
