Birch succinctly explains the feelings behind the song, “This is about the world going to hell in a handcart, feeling overwhelmed, but yearning for peace and happiness.”

Diving into the processes involved in the making of the video, she shares, “At art school I had made a 16mm film made up of nine Super 8 screens of a friend, standing in Alexandra Park, turning round. I divided the body into head, torso and feet. Each frame was filmed independently and I then refilmed the Super 8, on a grid, and filmed on 16mm rewinding the canister each time. This process has inspired me to make several videos, and now one for myself, using 9 frames. I wanted to make a colourful fun video for ‘Doom Monger’, that had an element of humour to it. With 9 screens to watch simultaneously, it’s possible to miss things, so the video may have to be viewed several times. Among other things, I seemingly punch myself, and I outstretch my arms and have to duck down out of their reach. I hammer frames out of the way, and I turn negative on many occasions, and I layer the individual frames so that there is a complex layer of images at other times.”

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“For the ‘Causing Trouble Again’ video, after hearing Bob Dylan sing about a white ladder all covered with water, I became obsessed with white ladders,” Gina Birch says. “ I decided to use five white ladders, three with seven rungs…I realized later that this references Jacob’s Ladder and a connection from Earth to heaven, but I think I was thinking of ladders as a symbol of getting on, getting up. I wanted to have a choreographed movement with four of us with these ladders. How do we move with ladders? Do we move together, do we fight, do we dance?

“I also wanted to reference the wind scene from the film, The Colour of Pomegranates, and to include as many artist women from the Women in Revolt exhibition as I could. I wanted them to be troublesome, or just to shout ‘Causing trouble!’ I ended up inviting all the artist musician women I knew who could make the shoot, and it was a fantastic meeting of great women, many of whom had never met each other before.”

‘Causing Trouble Again’ was inspired by 2024’s Women in Revolt, an exhibition of feminist art and activism at Tate Britain which included one of Birch’s most recognized art pieces, 1977’s 3 Minute Scream, a landmark short film in which she stares down the camera and, as the title suggests, screams for the duration of a Super 8 cartridge. Birch created the epic six-minute track by inviting several female artists, including experimental music pioneer Cosey Fanni Tutti and writer/painter Caroline Coon, to record themselves saying the names of women who have inspired them – women who have indeed “caused trouble.”

Propelled by Birch’s springy bass and a breakneck drum machine beat, ‘Causing Trouble Again’ crescendos until hundreds of names are being read aloud: Nina Simone to Dolly Parton, Grace Jones to Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth I to Stormy Daniels. The result is extraordinary – a jubilant exploration of what it means to go against society’s grain, overlaid with fuzzy guitar solos and rebellious flair.

Trouble:

1. I Thought I’d Live Forever
2. Happiness
3. Causing Trouble Again
4. Cello Song
5. Keep To The Left
6. Doom Monger
7. Don’t Fight Your Friends
8. Nothing Will Ever Change That
9. Hey Hey
10. Train Platform
11. Sleep

The post Gina Birch announces new solo LP Trouble; shares first song & video ‘Causing Trouble Again’ appeared first on She Makes Music.

“Vice asked his long-term friend writer, dancer, and choreographer, Oakland-based Brontez Purnell, to be the central character of the video,” explains Birch. “There are five women bass players performing in the video, Emily Elhaj (Angel Olsen), Hazel Rigby (TBHQ), Mikki Itzigsohn (Small Wigs), Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds), and myself. We shot the video in L.A. so the bass players in the video are not primarily the ones on the track apart from Emily Elhaj who plays bass with Angel Olson and Gina B. The song is a celebration of bass guitar as a voice, simple or layered, pounding or dancing, or everything at once. A celebration of a shout, a yell from the window, and the I am Here, of a woman’s creativity on the bass guitar. I play my bass, my bass my bass my bass, I play my bass loud.”

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I Play My Bass Loud is heralded by the propulsive first single, ‘Wish I Was You,’ available now at all DSPs and streaming services. The track – co-written and co-produced by the legendary Youth and featuring guitar by longtime fan Thurston Moore – is joined by an official music video, directed by Gina’s filmmaker daughter Honey Birch.

“The album distills my years of musical, political, and artistic life with these genre-breaking songs,” says Gina Birch. “It’s a personal diary using sounds and lyrics, full of fun, rage, and storytelling.”

Known for a wildly diverse artistic career that includes co-founding iconic British post-punk band, The Raincoats, Birch will mark today’s arrival of ‘Wish I Was You’ with a special single release show at Third Man Records London’s intimate Blue Basement, set for this Friday, November 11. Next year will see Birch celebrate I Play My Bass Loud with an eagerly anticipated UK/Ireland headline tour, getting underway March 21 at Brighton’s Hope and Ruin. Additional dates will be announced soon.

I Play My Bass Loud:

1. I Play My Bass Loud
2. And Then It Happened
3. Wish I Was You
4. Big Mouth
5. Pussy Riot
6. I Am Rage
7. I Will Never Wear Stilettos
8. Dance Like A Demon
9. Digging Down
10. Feminist Song
11. Let’s Go Crazy

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