Back in August we wrote about ‘70s Adventure‘, a single from Belaver‘s upcoming album, Lain Prone on Feel Bad Records. “The songwriting project of New York‘s Ben Godfrey,” we wrote, “the outfit has developed a peculiar, fatalistic tone quite unlike anything else.” The single captured what makes Belaver so distinctive, what we described as “a blend of deadpan humour and human heart which proves ideally suited to capturing the bleak and bizarre milieu to which it belongs,” and ramped up excitement for the record.
Fast forward a few months and Godfrey is back with new single ‘Mount Misery’ ahead of the album’s release. The song is as upbeat as anything Belaver has put out to date, but beneath the surface lies a cutting critique of consumerism and entitlement. “Even in death I still expect treasure forever for doing nothing,” go the final lines. “If I’m not entitled to be fed and be fucked / That might mean I might be the one who is what I say is my enemy.”
The song comes complete with a video designed in collaboration with fifteen animators, a process which itself reached into the heart of one such exploitative scene. Dust Reid of Feel Bad Records explains the concept in detail:
Ben showed me this Medium article about how wikiHow exploits its artistic labor by hiring global talent through services like Fiverr and then having the artists sign an NDA so they wouldn’t receive credit for their work. This seems to be the general operating M.O. for corporations when commissioning cheaper labor and it prevents the artist from building a portfolio which would help lead them to bigger commissions. We decided to use Fiverr but in our outreach asked each animator for photos, bios and links to their work and told them we want to collectively publicize who they were.
The “Mount Misery” music video captures our attempt at modernizing the ‘American Dream.’ In corporate America we’ve come to see how creatives can get the short end of the stick. With this video concept, we aim to popularize promoting people’s work and ascribing value to their contributions. We hired 17 incredible animators to represent and design different segments of the song, encouraging them to fold in their own vision to our story; the end result is the quilted essence of Mount Misery’s message.
We gave each animator a prompt, some asked for storyboards which we provided and others provided them back. The only direction we gave on the physical appearance of the character throughout was that it should be a blond man. Some interpretations didn’t end up having blonde hair but it was truly a collaborative effort and to each animator we are thankful for their interest and enthusiasm on this project.
Lain Prone is out on the 22nd October and you can pre-order it from the Belaver Bandcamp page.