Our very good friends over at the amazing blog Taken By Sound, which up till now have resigned themselves to album, song, and video reviews, have given me the great honor of being their very first interview!
Not surprisingly, they did a fantastic job with it.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE
“..the function of light in the video takes on a metaphorical aspect. Here, it seems to be the insight that comes with time. While in turmoil, it’s practically darkness because we can’t make sense of things. Only later can we “shed light” on what happened.”
Thank you to Steve at Those Who Dig for a beautiful review of ‘The Turns’ including a wonderful reading of the video. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
A friend posted something on Facebook about Freddie Mercury’s death (21 years ago yesterday) and it got me thinking about him, for a quick minute or so, like so many of the lightning-fast blips that we’re fully accustomed to coming in brief contact with on social media, online, on television, in the street, in daily life, etc.
Ironically, or maybe not at all, it was the striking black and white photo (posted here) that caught my attention. (Ironic since, obviously, it was the phenomenon of this man’s extreme musical/audial magic-making that made me, along with large portions of humanity, become so fully enraptured, and maybe not at all since his mastery at showmanship and visual presentation, were and are blatantly obvious and acknowledged by anyone who cared or cares to look.)
And so I shared it on Facebook, and posted on Twitter. But it made me feel sad, and maybe even a bit shameful, as it often does, to have so quickly and summarily passed over a presence that has meant a very lot to me over the years. So I thought I’d like to just write a little something more, to commemorate in my own way.
The video for The Turns has been posted over at the fantastic music blog THIS IS BOOK’S MUSIC.
Hope everyone here in the U.S. had a wonderful, healthy, and fun Thanksgiving!!
I’m painting a picture of something
We’re all doing it
Trying to replicate something,
some representation of something
Of a thing we can never be sure of
In actuality of a hope more than anything else
Yes, our whole existence is really a hope
Another, more fancy-ish word for it might be a ‘projection’
Or just ‘project’ isn’t far off either.
What does it consist of?
Thoughts, behaviors, meanings, colors, actions, people,
rooms, moods,
interactions, desires
A million tangible and intangible things
And it’s impossible not to do it
Even to kill yourself is to go somewhere else, so that’s something
And anyway, you will have shaped everything.
I’m beyond psyched that Under The Radar premiered the official video for my new single ‘The Turns’ today!
Take a look and let them know what you think 🙂
photo by Willie Davis
Q. How does it feel to have a UK release date for your album, Story?
David Bronson: It feels fantastic. It’s like the other half of the picture in a way. I mean, at least half, and probably more, of the music that’s meant so much to my life has come from the UK. I think it’s one of the great stories…Read the full interview
I want to thank Rob Carnevale and indieLondon for a very thoughtful and extremely well executed interview that was great fun to participate in.
I was recently asked to write a few of my personal thoughts about the ‘Times’ video for a press outlet, so I thought I’d post them here before the next single comes out (any day now):
Robbie Mangano, David Bronson, and Maria Neckam during the shooting of the official music video for ‘Times’
In general I like it when things have numerous layers of meaning, probably because that’s how life is, and since this is a record where there are layers upon layers built in, I really like the idea of the videos having some of that depth as well.
I thought ‘Times’ in particular was a perfect song to play with this idea, since it’s at least partially about the very notion of multiplicity in things – even the song title attests to that. On the other hand I’m also very drawn to a certain degree of clarity and simplicity (from a practical as well as aesthetic or conceptual point of view). So the challenge was to come up with a concept for the video that somehow expressed what, to me, were the important themes of the song (movement, growth, etc., which tie very significantly into the larger album as a whole), as well as something that was almost instantly grasp-able as an idea, both visually and conceptually.
As far as the actual production was concerned – we all had a fantastic time making this video – it was an incredible amount of planning work (and took three full days of shooting!) to get all the correct angles and configurations of players covered, and significantly more than that in the editing and post-production, but everyone involved was very happy with the results, myself certainly included.
And I had a lot of fun putting in little visual/conceptual touches (like the time of day outside the window changing to the beat of the song – another demonstration of varying “times”) – for me these are just other little metaphors for the larger themes. There are even three, very quick, little visual references to the ‘Story’ itself, if you’re fast enough to spot them (hint: look for the album artwork).
4 stars for ‘Story’ in Pittsburgh Daily News In Tune Magazine – right in there w/ Beth Orton, The Wallflowers, and Streisand (!)
“Talk about committing to your art… It’s obvious that Bronson poured everything he had into the project and the results are tremendous… Can’t wait to hear the rest of this fascinating labor of love.”
Thank you kindly, Jeffrey Sisk!
