Taking a note from Yoko Ono’s book about performance art, Erase Errata’s latest video is fascinating, and more than a little weird. Take a look for yourself here.
Erase Errrata’s newest album Lost Weekend embraces awkward melodies with avant-garde production techniques. Their latest video from this release has both of these qualities in spades.
“History Of Handclaps” was already the group’s cornerstone single to Lost Weekend, and now it’s one of the first to get the full video treatment. As soon as you hit “play,” you know what you’re about to watch is going to be, well, a little on the strange side.
It begins with a metronome. To be more specific, a photo of a metronome hanging in a museum. A mother holding a baby looks at the image and touches it, bringing the metronome to life. From there, chaotic scenes of 3D art installations flip around on an all-white background. There’s someone standing with a lightbulb on the end of a long wire, swinging it over and over. There’s a small stepladder sitting next to a larger ladder, hearkening back to the days when Yoko Ono and other artists would create huge pieces of performance art in galleries. The ladder has a cultural significance in the art world. Ono once created a piece where the viewer had to climb a ladder to read a phrase on a piece of paper attached to the ceiling. It’s also how she and John Lennon met.
Erase Errata performs art for arts sake, and they appear to hold performance art in high regard. While the avant-garde music and arts scene seems to be swarmed with high-brow intellectualism, the band never takes themselves too seriously in “History of Handclaps.” The music features a plucking surf-style guitar riff over shouting, nearly spoken-word vocals.
The band goofs around with long strips of colorful tape, wrapping it around and around one member, or making spaghetti with thick pieces of rainbow-colored string. It’s artistic, but it also has a fierce sense of humor.
The San Francisco post-punks recently released their newest album Lost Weekend, and premiered track “My Life In Shadows,” which you can find right here.
Take a look at their latest video for History of Handclaps” below:
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