21 September 2022 - 0 Comments

Amamelia is the musical project of Amelia Berry (she/her), a musician and songwriter currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Amamelia's music combines breaks normally found in Jungle & Drum & Bass with a sugary synthetic pop sensibility.

Following the unexpected Tiktok hit Gap Selection, Amamelia shares the new baroque-beat track Colourbox, along with a music video created by Simon Ward. Colourbox is a standout track from her long awaited sophomore album Bananamelia! (released digitally and Vinyl LP on November 3 via Sunreturn).

nspired by Cornelius, The Cardigans and Stereolab's Dots and Loops, Colourbox revels in the sounds of 90s Lounge. It plays with evocative chimes, homesick synths, field recordings, and of course drum breaks.

"I originally started writing Colourbox in 2015, for my band Polyester (then still Kip McGraph) but never finished it." says Berry. "For this Amamelia version I wanted it to roll out like an old jazz standard, where listeners hear a verse once and then the rest of the song is variations of the chorus, like something from a Busby Berkeley musical but with breakbeats."

Amamelia doubles down on the vibe with the inclusion of nostalgic vocals courtesy of Maddison Van Staden (Van Staden and Bohm) and Hannah Rewick. "Maddy and Hannah's vocals are really important for the emotion of the song, their voices are so complimentary and Hannah's double in the chorus really adds this sweetness to Maddy's lead. I had a lot of fun doing the analogue synth parts for this track, and I'm really proud of the pulse-width flute sound."

Colourbox is accompanied by a music video animated by Simon Ward, and made with assistance from NZ On Air Music. "I really love the nostalgic mood and how it's a genuine love song but comes at it from the side, in a really natural way," says Ward.

"It was fantastic working with Amelia, we both have quite similar interests in weird films, games and music. She was playing a lot of Ape Escape and wanted a video game feeling for the video. In my head I had some overly complicated love letter to animation, set outside in a natural environment (but made on the computer). After we chatted a bit, it ended up becoming a mix of things we both love."

Berry notes, "as soon as Simon mentioned eels, I knew it was going to be perfect."

Ward continues; "Recently I've been experimenting with markerless motion capture and wanted to see if it would work outside. I went and found a river in Wellington and did the footage for the animation in situ. Then I wondered how long a stretch of the river I could capture with photogrammetry, so I tried that too."

The video also has a homage to Len Lye's 1935 experimental film 'A Colour Box.' "My original video idea involved a 3d character making a large scale paint on film animation so when things shifted to video games I tried the pixel art version of Len Lye... MSPaint on Film. I tried to mimic that process at a super small scale on the computer, drawing lines and blobs on a very thin digital canvas in Aseprite, then position animating that, like a film strip going through a projector at 25fps."

Ward reflects "I'm really pleased with how the video turned out, it was a fun journey of experimentation with this one and I got to go outside for a change. Also - I still love the song after hearing it a million times too."

"I've been humming this unfinished tune for seven years," says Berry. "Its great to finally have it as this material object out in the world. I still can't get over how good the video is, I've been a fan of Simon's work for such a long time, so it was a bit of a dream come true to work with him."

Amamelia - Colourbox
Released digitally on September 21

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Photo Credit: Frances Carter

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