Video: Civil Union - Follow The Red Herring (UTR Premiere)

Auckland three-piece Civil Union are on the precipice of releasing their debut album Seasick Lovedrunk, and in anticipation they have unveiled a brand new video for single 'Follow The Red Herring'. Directed by Damian Golfinopoulos, who also conjured up the band's earlier video for 'We'll Let It Lie', the new visual offering is an apt fit for the menacing song, bringing together a loose menagerie of distorted imagery that centres around the group's members. Watch the clip below, and then read our Q & A with guitarist/vocalist Anthony Drent...

For this video you worked with Damian Golfinopoulos, one of our favourite local directors who also made your incredible clip for ‘We'll Let It Lie'. His aesthetic really pairs well with the tone of Civic Union's music, how did your relationship with him come about??

We all knew Damian from other stuff he had done like the Marlon Williams and Girls Pissing videos but we were kind of reintroduced to him through Josh Lynn, the guy who recorded our album, as he was always coming into his office space in the studio to work on his films while I was on the couch listening back to stuff. We eventually started talking and it seemed like he had a lot of weird ideas for videos, (power rangers vomiting black ooze was one concept) but he is also pro as fuck and a lovely guy too. I am always really surprised when anyone wants to do any sort of round 2 with us so when he suggested a second video I almost fell out of my chair.

Can you tell us a bit about the concept behind the new video, and how it all came together during filming?

We had a meeting in the Auckland Clinical Studies building about doing a video covertly inside this drug trial that Josh and Damian were doing, but we could never figure out what else to do with it or whether it even fit with the song. Eventually Damian got this new toy, a visual mixer, which I kind of don’t understand but someone explained it to me as treating recorded video like sound, the signal going through a mixer and you fucking with it like you would with a pedalboard and then the video coming out the mixer and into the TV which is like the amp. So we were basically playing around with buzzy video effects in a lounge for half a night and then Damian cut it into something semi coherent over the next week or so. 'Follow The Red Herring’ is definitely a lot looser than 'We’ll Let It Lie' and to me feels more like an accompanying visual aide to the song rather than like an almost self-contained short film.

You guys are releasing new album Seasick Lovedrunk soon via Melted Icecream, I seem to remember this was due out a while ago… what's been the hold up?

We had a niggly mastering fuck up with the test pressings and had to have it remastered and then go through the whole waiting around for records to arrive and are they even listenable process for a second time. On the plus side these songs are really old now and we have heaps of new ones that we would rather be playing. But seriously vinyl is killing my music industry, dawg.

What kind of thematic territory does it traverse? What was your frame of mind while writing the songs?

Lyrically the album is basically half about external ‘topical’ subjects and then the other half is very esoteric, self involved poems about love. My frame of mind when we wrote these songs was very sincere and intense, I’ve definitely become quite the dried up old biscuit in the last two years.

What’s on the cards for Civil Union following the album’s release?

A tour, maybe someone out there will buy our record, after which we’ll begin recording album number two.

Civil Union are throwing an all ages video release party tonight at the Grey Lynn Community Centre in Auckland with support from Las Tetas, Center Negative and Courtney Hate. Head over here for details.