It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since Information Society scored a major hit with “What’s on Your Mind (Pure Energy).” The band has stayed active in the years since, releasing three albums in the ’90s and three in the new millennium. Recently the band releases a new single on Tommy Boy Records and today we’re thrilled to be premiering the lyric video for “World Enough.”
Those that are mostly familiar with the band’s big hit single in the ’80s will instantly recognize the Information Society sound when listening to “World Enough.” The song features pulsating electronic beats, synthesizer textures and Kurt Harland’s simple yet entrancing vocals. “On the surface, the lyrics sound like someone talking about wanting to change their life,” said Harland. “But I think on a deeper level it is more about regret.”
The lyric video explores the vastness of our universe, catapulting the viewer through the cosmos. The song’s lyrics are interspliced with a variety of visuals, care of “unofficial” band member Zeke Prebluda.
“I’ve been handling Information Society’s visuals for over the past decade,” he said. “I’m sort of the unofficial fourth member of the band. The guys in the band have great faith in my vision for creating our stage visuals and our music videos. For previous videos I’ve asked Paul or Kurt “What is this song about” or “what images does it conjure up” for them. But for “World Enough” I was just inspired by how the song personally resonated with me and with my obsession with retro futurism and arcane concepts just kind of spilled over on it. What caught my attention was the intro synth brass section, to me it sounded like a homage to the Blade Runner soundtrack, which is one of my favorite cinematic views of futurism from the ’80s. But now the movie is retro futurism and we are currently living in the actual year the film takes place. Most people all grew up on and were sold a conceptual vision of a wonderful Utopian future but what we live in is nothing like that. It’s the loss of promised future that I tried to express with the images I animated for “World Enough.” I’m fascinated about the concept of how retro-futurism and the occult has been marketed in media. A hundred years ago when spiritualism was popular you would go to a clairvoyant to seek unknown knowledge and now we literally use the expression “consult the oracle” to mean look something up on the internet.”
Paul Robb, who is a founding member of Information Society and serves as a songwriter, producer and synth player in the band, adds more color to the new song. “The title and chorus lyrics for the song were taken from the famous poem by Andrew Marvell from the 1600s titled “To His Coy Mistress.” That should probably be enough to give you an idea what the song is about!”
The poem can be read below:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
A hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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