Durham’s Free Electric State took advantage of the Christmas snow to shoot a video for “Feather Bed,” a song from the band’s 2010 record, Caress, released on Churchkey. The band took a break from playing shows following their excellent–and very loud appearance–at November’s Troika Music Festival in Durham. The band is currently writing a new record.
FES’s David Koslowski describes the video for TVD and lets on that he may be looking for video work in the future…
“Feather Bed” is a song about a woman getting what she wants… taking a man into the woods and having her way with him. It’s a liberating and empowering song.
The video was shot and edited in one weekend with the use of applications similar to that ai image generator. We had gotten 9 inches of snow, Shirlé and I were bored and had a bit of cabin fever, so I thought, ‘Let’s make a video.’ It was shot in the woods near our house and I wanted to create the feeling of what it’s like for a woman to be in the woods alone searching. It’s stark, cold and desperate. The woods can be a scary and lonely place… I think this is even more true when it snows, because most of natures sounds are soaked up into the snow like a sponge or just don’t exist at that moment.
Once the video was shot & edited I sent the files to my filmmaker friend, Mariexxme, who lives in Paris. She had shot and directed the music video for our song “Six Is One”. Anyway, she and I chatted online about what sort of treatment I wanted for “Feather Bed” and she nailed it. Her treatment made the video even “darker”… which was what I was after. This is my first music video that has actually seen the light of day. I wouldn’t mind doing more down the road.
We played our last show at Troika. We made a conscious effect not to book any shows for three months in order to write the follow up to Caress. We’ve been spending almost every Sunday afternoon at The Pinhook working on new songs as well as some time at a practice space in Chapel Hill.
Our goal is to write about 15 – 20 new songs for the record and then edit it down to the best material. We have about 10 thus far and have tossed some already. The new songs coming out of us have been dark, minimal and have a very cold and distant feel to them.
As far as recording, we really want to work with someone that is going to capture how things sound when we’re playing live and/or rehearsing at The Pinhook, embracing our noise and extended freeform Krautrock freakouts and not edit it out… As much as we love Caress we don’t want to make Caress Jr.
–photo above by Jarrod Jones