Los Angeles-based electro-pop artist BUZZ shares haunting, avant-pop track and video ‘Statues’, that finds the singer lamenting a love bound to this dimension. It’s the latest taste of the forthcoming otherworldly, self-produced debut EP On Matters Of Searching. ‘Statues’ makes dulcimer, pizzicato strings, clavichord, rain sticks, and kalimba feel like they have always belonged in an electronic setting as the track blurs ancient and futuristic periods while carrying a torch for ascension.
An ancient, inter-galactic love letter, ‘Statues’ was written and produced by BUZZ and features water drops from caves and branches being stepped on to further emphasize its earth-bound fate. The explosive reaction across social media gained the song a last minute seat on BUZZ’s forthcoming EP. Inspired by the art of the Hellenistic period, the lyrics are a love letter written by Aphrodite to a secret earthly muse, as if a time traveler were hiding relics for someone they love and lamenting their ties to time.
Inviting listeners inside BUZZ’s sonic moodboard, BUZZ explains, “My mind loves to live in a fantasy world consisting of an ancient, highly evolved civilization that communicates with other beings from different worlds, openly trading and traveling between multiple galaxies, but still looks like the ancient world with ornate open air palaces and lavish royal baths…can you tell I watched ‘Three Thousand Years Of Longing?'”
While crafting the song, BUZZ attempted to put herself in the shoes of someone desperately wanting to keep their loved ones’ memory alive, while understanding no physical object lasts forever. “I kept imagining what I would do for someone I adored to preserve their memory across the earth – painting pictures, sculpting busts, weaving tapestries, and the ultimate heartbreak of knowing no physical thing I make on this earth will last forever which is shown in the line “’I wish we could be statues, oh but they’ll go too.’”
Delving into how the unique, field recorded sounds came to be on the track, as opposed to a traditional drum set, BUZZ says, “Sonically, I wanted the song to feel as if it lived in a cave, so the highs are rolled off on a lot of the percussion and there’s everything from rain sticks to wind chimes to kalimba and xylophone giving a more melodic structure to the percussion sections.”
The track’s accompanying video was directed by Sasha Paskal, who also directed BUZZ’s previously released video for her track, “Nothing Is Real.” It was shot at the historic California Trona Pinnacles, the site of scenes from Battlestar Galactica, StarTrek, and Planet Of The Apes. BUZZ says on the idea behind the video, “I wanted to look and feel a bit stranded, since emotionally the song puts me in this place where I have dominion over the world for a few seconds.”
