Northampton-based experimental jazz duo Fred Cracklin have released their new album Anxiety Kinship and are championing it with their new, wild video for “Boar Drill.” The duo, consisting of Adam Bosse on guitar and Max Goldstein on drums, delivers with a manic guitar and drum episode that twists and morphs with each passing measure. It lives up to the album’s title – two people in kinship delivering an anxiety-inducing thrill ride that is more indebted to the noise-rock of Lightning Bolt than it is to any traditional jazz. The song buckles at any hint of an ongoing rhythm or tempo, constantly warping itself to maintain an aura of chaos over complacency. The music video couples this with an animated psychedelia trip through an apocalyptic revolution in the animal world.
The title “Boar Drill” sounds like a play on a simple boring drill device, but the video, expertly animated and directed by Wishbone Zoe, proves otherwise. Almost immediately we see that this is a world ripped from a gory B-movie fantasy where wild boars wear drills on their noses. And drill they do, through the earth and the clouds, under the watchful eye of three oppressive supervisors.
The video, much like the song, is constantly evolving. The dull grey of a drill digging into the earth’s underbelly is suddenly replaced by vibrant, eye-candy shots of boars dancing. During a climactic point in the song, the boar world suddenly becomes coated in a harsh red as a monolithic drill tears up from below. The animation in this video is at times serious and at times silly, but maintains a frenzied and hallucinogenic atmosphere where no one is truly safe. It mimics the tyrannical and environmentally destructive world of bureaucratic capitalism that we’re all too familiar with, even through the lens of psychedelic boars. In the end, after the monolithic drill crashes, we see some boars riding off, hopefully to freedom, in a literal purple haze. A ton of beautiful, trippy animation and pounding percussion are packed into this four and a half minute ride.
Fred Cracklin’s second album Anxiety Kinship is out now through Midnight Werewolf and Sad Cactus Records, and the video for “Boar Drill” can be watched below: