Synth pop band The Slants have released an official music video for their track “Let The Right One In,” from 2012’s The Yellow Album. We have the video’s premiere right here at mxdwn.
The Slants were founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2006. All five members are of Asian Pacific Islander descent, and the band is known as the the first all-Asian American dance rock band. They stay involved with their community and their ethnic roots by playing at cultural festivals and fighting stereotypes. The group’s name is a reference to viewing life with a different perspective, which is an important aspect to the new video, as well as the slant guitar chords used in their music.
The Yellow Album is the most recent record from The Slants and their fourth LP. “Let The Right One In” was based off of the Swedish horror novel of the same name, which also spawned film adaptations in both Sweden and the United States. Simon Tam, The Slants’ founder and bassist, has this to say of the track and its accompanying video:
Thai and I wrote this song and it’s one of my favorite ones off of the album. It’s based off a vampire novel by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist (and later got turned into a few movies). The idea for the video came from eating at far too many sushi restaurants and watching the track go around…while wondering what things looked like from another point of view. It was shot in one took with some friends in the area and, best of all, we got to eat sushi on the set!
The video itself is called the “sushi edition,” which may not be surprising based on Tam’s explanation for the ideas that led them to create it. The visual for “Let The Right One In” is a first-person perspective of traveling around a sushi restaurant and watching what the patrons and workers are doing there. As you travel through the restaurant, you see couples, families and friends in a wide variety of activities. Some are as predictable as taking selfies and eating, while others are less predictable, like having a sword fight with chopsticks. To experience the whole thing for yourself, watch the video below.