Where in the world is Thollem? After spending the 2016 election season on the road with videographer ACVilla, documenting our countries’ political landscape for their music/video series Who Are U.S., recent dispatches have the itinerant musician somewhere near Detroit, MI. The missive from the artist came with a video for a new song called “Nuclear Nap,” which you can watch below. Recorded this year at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works, it features flutist Marco Orozco and guitarist Roderick Hohl, with Thollem providing vocals. Pastoral meets post-nuclear here as flute and guitar weave a throwback vibe while Thollem delivers the eternal message that life is “all a dream.” Maybe.
The video for “Nuclear Nap” is once again directed by ACVilla, and while it involves a straightforward concept, it’s packed with all kinds of metaphorical significance. Using one continuous take shot on a tunneled bridge that leads to a viewing platform above the Berkeley Pit in Butte, MT, we watch Thollem’s time-lapsed stride up the spine-like expanse until he comes eye-view with the camera. The Pit, once a copper mine but since filled by heavily acidic waters from the mining, is a ticking time bomb expected to reverse flow back into the surrounding creeks and rivers around 2020. ACVilla’s choice to locate the shoot at the site of this mounting ecological catastrophe is significant, and it echoes “Nuclear Nap”‘s recognition that our collective reality has become a nightmare. But, even as the song’s atomic blast threatens to halt our evolutionary path in its tracks, we might see Thollem’s ascent through the tunnel as visually emblematic of consciousness itself as it progresses up the evolutionary path. Maybe.
Watch: Thollem “Nuclear Nap”
