Video Premiere: Deepsea Lights' "Singing the Bones"

Scott Wallace
22nd Oct 2017

Melding downtempo electronica, hip-hop, enchanting folk, and dark, dreamy ambience, Sydney's Deepsea Lights are hard to pin down. It's their restless exploration of sound, rhythm and atmosphere that makes them so fascinating and so easy to admire. Their brand new video "Singing the Bones" is the perfect example of their style. Its sumptuous visuals and rippling music echo with wonder, moving from its glacial beginning, through its stuttering, intricately choreographed end. The video is out today, so we had a chat with the Deepsea Lights duo of Gemma and Joe about the exciting new piece.

Who did you work with on the new video?

Although conceived and produced ourselves, we worked with a bunch of good folks! Stackhat stepped in pretty late in the process to put together the edit and really pushed the project to the next level. Emma Paine was our cinematographer, and we featured the fire twirler and goddess Bella Fuego, the dance team at LEAP studios, epic costumes by Kamikaze Couture, vegan makeup artist extraordinaire Stacey Abdilla (from Stella Addiction) and several members of Joe's family helped out too!. 

How much was the video concept influenced by the track itself? 

The clip is for the twin songs ‘The Mountain Song’ and ‘Abandon Ship’ which come together to make 'Singing the Bones'. The idea for the film was to portray the story of a woman who is discovering what it is to be a Wild Woman (The Mountain Song) and then a man who is faced with the multifaceted nature of this now fully embodied woman, and deciding if he too is ready to embrace this in his life (Abandon Ship). It's pretty much in line with the meanings of the two songs and why they were written. That said, the concept is also strongly influenced by the book “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. 

Your work is very fluid in terms of genre. How much do you think about genres and artists that have influenced you when you’re writing and recording?

I think the point is that we don't think about it all that much to begin with. We start with a concept or an idea and then flesh it out with whatever musical tools we have, without thinking too much about what box(es) we're sitting in creatively. Genre isn't our goal or destination, it's the palate we use to paint with. 

What’s the creative dynamic like between the two of you?

We like to think of it like we're a combination of 'short range' and 'long range' perspectives. Joe is really good at throwing ideas out there and getting excited about grand plans or small patches of soundscapes and riffs, whereas Gem is good at looking at whole projects, logistics, arrangement and so on - she sees the bigger picture. It's a pretty awesome combo.

What’s your favourite track to perform live?

We have a pretty rad cover of Merril Bainbridge's song 'Mouth'. It's gritty and electronic and super fun. 

What else is on the horizon for Deepsea Lights?

At the moment we're setting ourselves up to embark on writing an album and putting together a show we can tour in the future. We have lots of grand plans, so it'll be interesting to see where they end up! In the short term we have a couple of gigs to organise and some singles to release, but our focus will really be on writing for a bit. 

Check out "Singing the Bones" below: