Today I want to introduce you to Blue Glass, the solo project of good friend and former Live Eye Tv alum, Michael Shunk. Michael also plays in the Seattle-based band Transient Songs with singer/songwriter John Frum, but his new Blue Glass LP Eleven Years is a mostly self-realized collection of songs written while living in Europe. The album was recorded in Seattle at Earwig Studio with engineer Don Farwell, and it finds Shunk handling all the instrumentation with the help of hired drummer Moises Padilla. Michael was recently interviewed by Impose regarding the release of Eleven Years, as well as a video I helped him produce for the track, “Take Me Back to Berlin.”
Michael contacted me this past Winter about collaborating on a music video for Eleven Years and “Take Me Back to Berlin” seemed like a logical choice as the song is emblematic of the travels which served as a creative impetus for the album, as well as it’s introspective mood. In the beginning, our talks centered around the emotional impact that Berlin held for him–it’s importance as a vibrant cultural center but also it’s painful place in history. While we discussed various strategies for portraying that, in the end, we decided a more open-ended approach was best. As Michael explained last week to Impose:
“The concept for the video closely follows the concept of the song, a man far away from a place he wants to be. Imperfectly recalled memories play a big unspoken part in the theme and psychedelic overtones were used throughout. There are close shots of me, never looking at the camera, which was intended to be a voyeuristic interrogation of sorts, and to give a sense of entrapment, of non-movement, contrasted against the constant flutter of abstract images and free-form movement in the background.”
You can check out our video for “Take Me Back to Berlin” below. The video was shot with the help of Live Eye Tv’s Mike Walker and edited by yours truly. While you’re at it, Eleven Years is available now via Bandcamp. In this author’s humble but biased opinion it’s a pretty special record, and I’d definitely recommend giving it a listen!
