Crater, Seattle’s Ceci Gomez and Kessiah Gordon, touch the border between the beautiful and the grotesque with their shimmery industrial brand of pop. Through the interplay of lucid vocals and stammering synthetic gestures, their debut full-length Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep explores the pleasures and terrors of relating to someone else.
With the help of good friend and director Bobby McHugh, Crater have made a video for the record’s lead single “Habits Die Slow” that’s stunningly clear and lush, filmed in the Olympic Peninsula in the dead of winter. Ceci and Kessiah are identically outfitted—like they could be interchangeable—as they traverse the geography of the Pacific together. Drenched in rain on a barren mountainside they hold each other in an affecting display of codependency. But even on sunny beaches something feels unsettled, and soon once-subtle blips and glitches in the film’s seamwork begin to take over with the entrance of distorted electric guitars, as if reality is collapsing and revealing its faulty mechanics. “There is something that could fix us, but we’re too stubborn to know,” Ceci sings, her voice free-floating alone before tremors of electronics seep in and darkness consumes the pair.
Crater shared their thoughts on the video:
The video concept is predominately grounded in our love for Moonassi, a series of exclusively black and white illustrations created by the Korean artist Daehyun Kim. Our favorite pieces focus on the human condition and universal sadness, an artistic vision we couldn’t help but feel deeply connected to especially when figuring out what would work thematically with a song like “Habits Die Slow”. While the lyrics center around the demise of a romantic relationship, the video aims to deconstruct these boundaries a bit; the characters might be strangers, friends, foes, or lovers, all of whom feel simultaneously close and distant to one another. While the song alone paints a picture that is less hopeful for the relationship, the visual story doesn’t quite resolve in the same way. There is either rebirth, or the acceptance of the true end. However you want to look at it, really.
Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep is out now on Help Yourself Records.
