If The Danner Party ever lands a spot on Oklahoma concert series Tulsa Little Jam, it will be rather ironic, since the jams in the Tulsa band’s repertoire are anything but little. Whether in a live setting or on record, the psychedelic rock band has been slinging crunchy sounds and trippy vibes in some form or another for nearly 10 years, with multiple releases under its belt.
Its third studio album has been in the works for some years, with unprecedented road blocks preventing it from nearing completion sooner. That’s a bit ironic for a band that playfully names itself after an infamous, ill-fated voyage from the pages of American history, but fortunately, the fellas need not resort to artistic cannibalism here. The promised land is finally coming into view.
The forthcoming record is named Ex Nihilo, a Latin phrase meaning “out of nothing.” Of course, the creative process tends to be highly influenced and doesn’t form in a vacuum. That didn’t stop The Danner Party, however, from putting out a fairly hands-off music video a few months back for “All I Think About is Sex and Killing Myself”. Stringing together blatantly watermarked stock footage united only by a search term, the band let the video assemble itself, committing to the idea whether it made contextual sense or not.
Today, The Danner Party continues its experimental streak with a medium-bending new visual for “Ego Death Rattle”, the group’s latest lead single from the upcoming album. Watch it now in this Make Oklahoma Weirder premiere.
Heads up: the video includes hand-drawn genitalia that could make this NSFW.
Set against a landscape pixelated with distorted band footage, a cyan-haired badass cruises in a red-hot convertible to the propulsive rock ‘n roll sounds of “Ego Death Rattle”. A descending guitar phrase plays like a chunkier, more lackadaisical James Bond as the hand-drawn car and driver roll into view, notably from the right side of the screen instead of the left. While this is most likely done to mirror the sound mixing, it’s also a move that subverts traditional left-to-right motion in visual media. It’s a subtle hint that things are about to get weird.
That’s quite an understatement, as the video includes anything from mouth movements out of the Conan O’Brien sketchbook to a band presence not far removed from the Jimmy Barnes cameo in Kirin J Callinan’s “Big Enough”. There’s also a trippy scene of transcendence over a full instrumental midsection complete with swirling, croaked vocal utterings. The driver floats into another realm that ups the psychedelia with baked color pools and warped imagery. Oh, and the character is completely nude.
This is a weird one, folks. You don’t wanna miss it.
aka Jarvix, the Chief Executive Weirdo of Make Oklahoma Weirder. His out-of-the-box music coverage has been published by the Oklahoma Gazette, KOSU, and The Oklahoman among others. He also makes DIY music as a solo multi-instrumentalist live looper in his spare time.
Thank U 4 the tour through the streets of U brain I need’a taco