Operators are releasing their new album Radiant Dawn this month, and Dan Boeckner's Wolf Parade offshoot are showing it off some with a new single. This one is called "I Feel Emotion," and it's arrived alongside a video.
For the clip, the band teamed up with directors Caleb Bardgett and Johnny Dunn, who explain that "it's set in a world newly-devoid of human life, and these TV sets are the last artifacts of human emotion, playing loops from lost transmissions from some other space-time."
Operators keyboardist Devojka further explained the following:
"I Feel Emotion" is a song for anyone who feels like they don't know how to be alive in the world today. The video we made for "I Feel Emotion" is compound nostalgia. It was inspired by a video installation I saw at an exhibition at MOMA called "Toward a Concrete Utopia, Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980." The installation was a stack of TV screens playing short loops taken from what looked to be old commercials and footage of people in various states of everydayness. As a first generation ex-Yugoslavian, I was surprised to find myself fascinated and moved; the intimacy of a woman ecstatically twirling with her purse flung on her shoulder in her smart and modern skirt completely arrested me. I come from a long line of pain, and I've been estranged from my family for some years now. Making the video was a way to connect to this heritage; something equally familiar and foreign to me. I combed through hours of footage from old Yugoslavian films looking for those intimate moments - the moments that happen between the BIG EVENTS in our lives.
Watch the video for "I Feel Emotion" for yourself below.
Radiant Dawn will be out on May 17 via Last Gang Records. Radiant Dawn is available to pre-order here, and see Operators' tour dates over here.
For the clip, the band teamed up with directors Caleb Bardgett and Johnny Dunn, who explain that "it's set in a world newly-devoid of human life, and these TV sets are the last artifacts of human emotion, playing loops from lost transmissions from some other space-time."
Operators keyboardist Devojka further explained the following:
"I Feel Emotion" is a song for anyone who feels like they don't know how to be alive in the world today. The video we made for "I Feel Emotion" is compound nostalgia. It was inspired by a video installation I saw at an exhibition at MOMA called "Toward a Concrete Utopia, Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980." The installation was a stack of TV screens playing short loops taken from what looked to be old commercials and footage of people in various states of everydayness. As a first generation ex-Yugoslavian, I was surprised to find myself fascinated and moved; the intimacy of a woman ecstatically twirling with her purse flung on her shoulder in her smart and modern skirt completely arrested me. I come from a long line of pain, and I've been estranged from my family for some years now. Making the video was a way to connect to this heritage; something equally familiar and foreign to me. I combed through hours of footage from old Yugoslavian films looking for those intimate moments - the moments that happen between the BIG EVENTS in our lives.
Watch the video for "I Feel Emotion" for yourself below.
Radiant Dawn will be out on May 17 via Last Gang Records. Radiant Dawn is available to pre-order here, and see Operators' tour dates over here.