The Last Royals Baeble / Sofar Performance
Before taking off on tour with The Hush Sound, The Last Royals dropped by Baeble headquarters for a Sofar Sounds performance. You can watch the rare, stripped down performance HERE.
Category: Featured
Happy Holidays! (Ever wonder) What’s Under Santa’s Hat?
Happy Holidays!
What is really under Santa’s Hat?
Why is it shaped that way? Why is it always on?
From the same twisted mind that brought the world the Little Baby’s Ice Cream videos, come two bizarre new Holiday videos that provide an answer to those age old questions. Just in time to wish a Scary Christmas to all, Doug Garth Williams of bitesizehumans.com has created these seasonal spots for Ooh La La Records.
Statement From creator Doug Garth Williams:
Working with Ooh La La was a great experience. They gave me complete creative control and I took full advantage of that. It’s a unique and really valuable opportunity to be commissioned to make a video and then be left to your own devices to see it through.
I started off with number of questions: ‘What is really under Santa’s Hat? Why is it shaped that way? Why is it always on? What if it turned out that Santa’s distinctly shaped hat was not actually full of empty space as one would assume? What if it was actually a fairly tight form-fitting hat contoured to a roughly hat shaped mysterious appendage below?
I wanted to play with the existing legend and present this non-traditional possibility that can actually still fit with a lot of the historical visual representations of Santa Claus. I wanted to present the concept while retaining a little ambiguity to leave questions remaining for viewers: Is Santa an Alien? Is he a human with some kind of parasitic alien creature latched on? Is this new? Has that always been there under his hat? Is that why his hat has always been that shape, or is the alien mimicking the look of a santa hat in order to blend in as part of a clever scheme to control the mind of a powerful earth creature? What is happening!? etc.
Part of the idea was to stretch the budget out to deliver 2 videos rather than 1, and that created the challenge of coming up with different ideas that incorporated the same character but had a distinctly different feel. The first is really an introduction that allows the viewer to focus on the concept. And the second is a sort of condensed Christmas special in terms of it’s tone and storyline. The first introduces this disturbing vision of Santa Claus and the second is a catharsis where we see him bested by what initially appears to be a helpless child in peril, but is in fact a badass Evil-Santa slayer.
A little about the Ooh La La Video Artist Series:
The Ooh La La Video Artist Series was created to give video artists a platform to experiment with short form video projects. Launched in May 2012 with director Michael Lawrence’s “Ooh La La Life Lessons” series; starting in 2013 Ooh La La plans select a different video artist every quarter to create a trio of digital shorts that will then be released once a month via the Ooh La La Recordings YouTube channel. Each “artist in residence” is asked to submit a brief treatment of their idea, but is essentially given complete creative control with the only parameter being they incorporate an Ooh La La recording into their video creation. Artists are given the freedom to create a sequential three part series, a single piece edited into three parts, or three unrelated spots.
Founder, Theo Aronson, explains, “As a huge fan of both music and film I wanted to give video artists a fun excuse to experiment and work on new ideas and concepts. It’s also my own excuse to have some fun and work with some of the most creative people I’ve ever met!”
Ooh La La 2012 Holiday Videos:
What’s Under Santa’s Hat?
http://youtu.be/RIEAfQHsEp0
What’s Under Santa’s Hat? Part 2: Slay Bells
http://youtu.be/WC4MoK8UYks
The Last Royals
Tape machines on public corners, 1’s and 0’s breathing for us.
But ask anyone in a falling elevator.
Does the steel and the mirror, and the glass make it clearer?”
The Last Royals were born from life’s drudgery, from the soaring highs and bottomed-out lows of daily urban existence. The lyrics reveal the slog of any city, the world’s unending grind, and ultimately reflect the perspective that beneath the grit and the weight is the faint gleam of hope. The stories woven through the verses and the choruses are earthed in reality and grounded in truth, telling tales of characters who live in urban landscapes as they come and go, love and fail, and desperately desire things of the heart and things of the flesh.
The Last Royals, a duo of writer/singer/producer Eric James and drummer Mason Ingram, are nascent, having only recently emerged from a joint project that brought the two musicians together in Spring 2010. The connection urged a new chapter in Eric’s career as a musician, evolving him from a solo artist who played under the moniker The Early Hours to one-half of a self-proclaimed pop band.
The songs that appear on The Last Royals’ debut self-titled EP, due out November 16th, 2010, re-imagine tracks originally penned for The Early Hours, which appeared on a self-released album of eight tracks called A Week And A Day. That project, driven simply by Eric’s desire to create solid, expressive songs, was written in eight days, each track representing one day of the week, plus an additional day. Eric’s sense of the performative was initiated in that collection as he built stories around imagined yet brutally real characters in a cityscape.
The Last Royals EP features final interpretations of four songs finished with Mason at Brooklyn’s Headgear Studios in July 2010, plus an additional remix of anchor track “Backseat Lovers”. While the lyrics spin harsh tales of life’s bittersweet sensibility, the music, upbeat electro-pop, tells an alternative narrative of levity, faith and danceable optimism. The tracks divulge the humble perspective of one man living in Manhattan as he works crap jobs to support his family and spends his nights locked in a recording studio searching for his personal truth.
The Last Royals collect the discarded remnants of a day in the city and glue them back together to reveal a new picture, making music from the broken pieces. The songs are necessary responses to the difficulties life presents. The sound of the music is hopeful and bright, but the juxtaposition of words and sounds evoke a candid depth that accurately echoes our lives. In the end the conflation of all the pieces harkens back to the moment of its creation. The most beautiful moment of any song is the moment it was written and it’s that instant that lingers in each note of The Last Royals’ music.
They’re splitting hairs and getting by
Trying every day and always to belong”
Press Photos:
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http://www.myspace.com/thelastroyals
http://thelastroyals.com/
The Last Royals EP
Please visit the eBoutique to purchase.
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