Photo by Phil Sharp
OXBOW recently announced the arrival of their first new music in six years with the forthcoming release of Love’s Holiday (July 21, Ipecac Recordings). The band share their second single, and video, from the forthcoming collection with today’s release of “Icy White & Crystalline”
Directed by Northern Irish filmmaker Kiran Acharya, the video for “Icy White & Crystalline” shows OXBOW as you’ve never seen them before, performing in San Francisco on the disused set of The Snow Queen. The video not only captures the band’s ferocious live energy, but literally shows them in a new light. “’Icy White & Crystalline’ is about as spontaneous as filmmaking can be,” says Acharya. “We had many ideas on the go, including an abstract graphic approach inspired by the work of Josef Albers, but Eugene found the set of The Snow Queen with 24 hours to go and said ‘this is the place.’ We loaded in, set it up as live, strapped an icicle to the microphone and went for it.” The result speaks to OXBOW’s formidable reputation as performers, showcasing one of the most direct songs on Love’s Holiday. Neither the band nor director knew how things would turn out, joking that they ended up with something like “’Shiny Happy People,’ directed by David Lynch.”
“Funny going all the way to a UK-based filmmaker/journo from Belfast in Kiran Acharya for directing the video for ‘Icy White & Crystalline’ but if you take the same elements and expect something different, you’re on the road to madness, which is precisely why we used wildly disparate elements to visualize our first ‘live’ music video for Love’s Holiday,” says vocalist Eugene S. Robinson. “Sixteen takes all the way through… ‘you don’t know how… hearts burn’ is the opening lyric. For probably the best of all reasons here: this video almost killed us to make.”
Guitar player Niko Wenner adds: “’Icy White & Crystalline’ began as a blown-out, ferocious rehearsal phone-recording we’ve aimed to match in high fidelity, the bridge another improv, the two joined make a classic OXBOW banger we’ll doubtless rock live for as long as we plug-in. Enjoy!”
The band simultaneously announced additional live shows in the U.K. and mainland Europe:
September 1 Glasgow, UK Broadcast
September 2 Birmingham, UK Supersonic Festival
September 3 Leeds, UK Brudenell Social Club
September 4 Bristol, UK Exchange
September 5 London, UK Studio 9294
September 6 Kortrijk, BE Wilde Westen
September 7 Brussels, BE Botanique
September 8 Nijmegen, NL Merleyn
September 9 Tetange, LU Human’s World Festival (free entry)
September 10 Bochum, DE Die Trompete
September 11 Vienna, AT Volkstheatre Rote Bar
September 12 Wroclaw, PL Liverpool
September 13 Warsaw, PL Hydrozagadka
September 14 Berlin, DE Roadrunners Paradise
September 15 Hamburg, DE Hafenklang
September 16 Aalborg, DK Lasher Fest
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