15 June 2018 - 0 Comments

Today Boycrush releases his new album Desperate Late Energy.

Alongside this is a video for the first song on the album - the sleek and melodic Yumi Zouma collaboration 100%, a hypnotic and bizarre green screen opus directed by Hayden Eastmond-Mein with animations by Zach Lieberman.

"Alistair and I stumbled across a strange corner of Shutterstock that had a whole series of bizarre clips of people acting and dancing in front of a green screen. It was like we reached the bottom of the stock footage barrel and it was amazing - lots of terrible dancing and awkward corporate scenes," says Eastmond-Mein of the video making process.

"We edited together several versions of a 100% video entirely with stock footage before we realised it'd be a lot more fun and a lot less constrained if we shot it all ourselves. Even so, the whole video heavily draws on the peculiar stock footage world we found and its aesthetic. Some of the shots are even re-enactments of our favourite stock clips that we couldn't let go of."

Boycrush is dance-oriented pop music, the creative project of producer, drummer and songwriter, Alistair Deverick. He is accompanied live by vocalists Carla Camilleri from Marbecks and Tom Young from Leisure.

Desperate Late Night Energy was constructed in an ancient basement surrounded by light-deprived plants and Red Bull. Its main concern is the yearning, confused no-man's-land at the end of a long night; looking for someone to take home, consuming more than one might need, clinging to dying remnants.

The lyrical material ranges from Remuera-mum-materialism to man-splaining to pining unrequitedness, and builds on the Boycrush theme of featured singers so solidly that every song is a guest spot.

In early stages of construction the titular scaffolding for Desperate Late Night Energy were choice extracts from a Wikipedia list of dance terms. Some eventually stuck and these remain on the final tracklist as testament to its roots - Demi-pointes, Frappé and Primitive Squat.

Like Boycrush's previous EPs, Desperate Late Night Energy was mixed by reclusive, self-deprecating genius Bevan Smith (Introverted Dancefloor), who patiently tolerated re-writes and late additions. With his backing vocal credits (uncredited) and structural critique, Smith resides in the liminal and murky territory between mix engineer and producer.

The visual content was conceptualised alongside the music and the video accompaniment to the releases have been surreal but specific. Modern dance through a hazy lense with nods to the green screens of Tim and Eric.

Featured on the album are Yumi Zouma, Chelsea Jade, Benny's Videos, Madeira, Jessie Cassin and Tom Young.

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