Adam O’Farrill Stranger Days’ 2021 album, Visions Of Your Other, veers through generational dichotomies intertwined with virtuosic performances and forthright arrangements. It’s outspoken without using words, leaving a trail of debris in its sonic wake. On closer, “Blackening Skies,” O’Farrill and his Stranger Days bandmates explore anxiety-laden landscapes with austere melodies and pensive rhythms. “The rhythm of the piece is purposefully mechanical, but more as if a machine is starting to sputter or malfunction from within that rhythm,” O’Farrill explains, continuing, “It’s meant to emphasize how climate change is forcing us to adjust to extreme weather that goes against our normal seasonal expectations.”
To capture that feeling and underlying end-of-days-catharsis sentiment, he worked with animator and director Elenor Kopka. “On a night filled with bad omen and dark presentiments, a medley of creatures try to give warnings about what is to come,” she describes, capturing the transfixing, engaging nature of the oddly whimsical black and white animations. “Unable to speak, they turn to absurd dance, letting loose like it’s the apocalypse.”
O’Farrill goes further stating, “Elenor’s animation similarly explores the boundary between order and mayhem, that despite the fantastical nature of the animals, there is a clarity and geometry to the way she unspools this imagery.” In tandem with the brooding, engrossing aural progressions, the world is turned on its head as the fires get brighter. Kopka summarizes it succinctly, saying, “The lunacy of this world unfolds in theatrical fashion.”
Visions Of Your Other is out now on Biophilia Records. Order it HERE and stream below.
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