Glam rock outfit Uni shared a video for their latest song “Hold My Gun.” It’s directed by band member Charlotte Kemp Muhl and dives into the themes of guns, drugs and sexuality. Muhl was also formerly half of the duo The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger with Sean Lennon.
The song has maximalist production, dense with details under the bluesy guitar and catchy chorus, “I am Genghis Khan/I am the only son/I killed the Indians/Well, hold my gun.” Keys, bass, horns and drums go all out on creative fills, with tone switch-ups and effects honed to each moment of the energetic tune.
In the video, vocalist Jack James and guitarist David Strange play the parts of drug lords, with Muhl and other girls pointing guns around in Spring Breakers-like costumes. Besides the normal guns, there’s a flamethrower, a gun-shaped guitar, fireworks, finger guns and the dildo-gun hybrid that made it onto the single artwork.
The band included a statement about guns and their presence as a phallic object, “Gunpowder was invented for fireworks. A spectacle of beauty. But somewhere along the way it mutated into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Suddenly a village idiot could obliterate a Samurai without getting close enough to smell his blood type. A lifetime of training felled by a trembling finger. Video killed the radio star, but who killed JFK? Pop culture popping a cap as incels pop pimples and Kendall Jenner proffers soda pop to angry mobs. Semi automatic, autoerotic. A Glock as a reproductive organ that inseminates life in reverse. Rap, country, cop and anarchist alike can all agree on one thing: the gun as penis.”
There’s also a disclaimer saying clearly that Uni are “satirizing the glorification of machismo violence in pop culture.” Their other recent music videos include “Predator’s Ball,” “Debris,” “American F*g” and “Destroyer.” The previous two were also directed by Kemp Muhl.
Uni mentioned recently in an interview with Q 104.3 New York’s Out of the Box that they have an album “all ready to go,” but said they might keep releasing it “one single at a time.” The working title is Lucifuga, Dante’s word for ‘cockroaches,’ “which means ‘one that avoids the light.’ We were making this post-apocalyptic and I was just thinking about cockroaches surviving the apocalypse…” They also mentioned recording, producing, making costumes and shooting videos for their music mostly on their own, “It’s a really DIY project.”
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