I don't really know what to say about this video. It has a pretty long back story, but I don't really want to tell it all. I guess that's kind of cryptic and weird, but, whatever, I don't think anyone would really care to hear it anyway. We had been talking about doing a session for over a year. I had seen Tearist for the first time at the Impose show (Funny enough) at SXSW last year and thought they where incredible. I had never heard of them, and didn't even know they were playing. They cranked the energy in that room up so high it was incredible. When I finally met Yasmine in LA and started talking about doing something I was sort of at a loss as to how to try to document their band. I mean, they are a LIVE band in every sense of the word, and I was unsure of the best way to go about trying to capture that, let alone how to present their energy, visually, in any cohesive manner. But we had time, and Yasmine and I became friends, so I decided to try to make it more of a 'portrait' focusing on Will and Yasmine as performers. I had been watching a ton of old B horror movies at the time and really wanted to do that long intro in the same way they do in those movies, where you don't really know what is going on but the shots look and feel creepy and claustrophobic. It also allows for an abstract narrative to be formed. In the same way Tearist's music does. Maybe that is over thinking it a bit too much. So I asked Yasmine to give me her interpretation.
We wanted to do a live session unlike any other we had seen- having never seen a live session that pushed bands further. We decided the best way to capture us live without merely showing us performing at a show- was not to show us in our practice space (which can, also, be seen), but to show us in an environment where we would have to deal and work with completely unknown elements. In this case dealing with the unpredictable elements of nature. We were in William's huge forest of a backyard. There was no flat ground. It was completely dark. Neither one of us could see anything. There was no constant.
The song was, also, our newest and not something we could fall back on, because the parts had not been fully solidified. This seemed to be the most accurate way to portray us and what we do- seeking out the things that we are afraid of and trying to conquer them. We took ourselves out of our comfort zones and allowed what happened naturally to happen. The performance was unrehearsed and the audio was taken directly from what happened out there. It was a live session in it's truest form- as raw and honest as we could be. The beginning of the video was representative of what it took for us to get to that place.
Our collaboration and constant communication with the director, Sean Stout, allowed us to all be on the same page in creating something that would not only represent the true mood of the session with all of us being taken to a place we were unfamiliar with, but it, also, invited the audience to follow us into that visual/auditory environment. Performers, director, and audience on even ground. He did an amazing job capturing the mood and visual environment that allowed for that.” –Yasmine Kittles
