The lush and innovative composers of Willow Beats are back and they’re dishing up another hypnotic slice of vibrant electronic music to slow dance to. The Melbourne duo have been causing a stir in the Australian electronic scene since winning the triple j Unearthed Parklife competition back in 2012.
In the years following they’ve released three EPs, including water which featured the hugely popular Merewif. Over and over, they’ve showed off a talent for working with audio samples to create a rich, atmospheric texture within their songs.
Today they release an epic music video that can only be described as a beautiful nightmare. On the clip, vocalist Kalyani Mumtez has said; “Be Kind To Yourself was born from the memory of dead bulls rotting in the paddock by my house. Our bodies are only holy and worship-able as vessels of consciousness. They become fertiliser when our souls pass on.”
The best aspect of Willow Beats is their ability to adapt from song to song, while still carrying their distinct production qualities and the striking vocals of Kalyani Mumtez.
Be Kind To Yourself was engineered by band member Narayana Johnson as he meshed together audio samples from nature with synthetically modified instruments. The intro features the sounds of birds waking at 4am, recorded using a hand recorder that had been taped to a bamboo pole.
Other hand-recorded samples also feature throughout the track, like the hi-hat sounds which were actually Johnson scraping his hand through a bucket of metal. Their songs feature a distinct juxtaposition between the natural and the created, seamlessly transitioning between blissful synths and natural noise.
The music video shows decay as a necessity of life rather than something to be feared, as it depicts a woman physically returning to the Earth. As black and blue veins creep across her lifeless face, colourful mushrooms and grasses sprout out along her body, enunciating how her dead body can be used by the earth to create life.
The film clip ends with a shot of the spot where her body was, completely covered with colourful vegetation and no sign that the body was ever there.
Be Kind To Yourself is the latest single off the duo’s long awaited debut album that’s due to be released soon. The track was recorded at their home studio in the Northern Rivers and the closeness to nature combined with their love for the possibilities of electronic music inspired the distinct sound that Willow Beats have established.
Credits
Director/Editor/Visual Effects – Oren Kanski Lavie
Producer – Jackson Lapsley Scott
Cinematography – Ehran Edwards
Production Design – Sabina Myers
Make-Up Artist – Jamila Hall
Design Assistant – Eliza Savage
Art Dept. Assistant – Anna Gregory
1st AC – Sebastian Laverde
Camera Assistants – Madison Heinze, Eliyah Cohen and Tyron Seeto
Matt Paintings – Sami Mattila
With creative direction from Kalyani Mumtaz
