For well over 20 years now, musician and SeepeopleS bandleader Will Bradford has kept his eye fixed firmly on the future, obsessing over what’s to come and what we can hope to leave for future generations. Opting for a sound both nuanced and rallying, and aiming to convey revelation through politically-charged lyrics, he stands and shouts to those who might listen, those who might join his community of individuals who possess a desire to speak truth to power. And he wraps his call-to-arms diatribes in the mantle of musical expression, with no regard for genre or creative compartmentalization.
“Everything I’ve written for SeepeopleS has been about how our world exists and breaks down around us,” explains Bradford. “But if this world, our world, is ending, how do we survive it together?”
And throughout his work, he’s sought ways to answer that question. Dabbling in indie-folk, 90’s electro, and art-pop, his songs are inclusive, in both theme and influence, drawing from divergent musical histories to form a coherent aesthetic that only he could wrangle. “It’s all about connection,” he says. “I’ve always been making an effort to connect everything and everyone, that’s why there’s no genre for SeepeopleS. This is my one project that I’ll always have where I can incorporate everything I love and say whatever the hell I want.”
He continues this exploration of genre shadows on Field Guide for Survival in This Dying World, his latest album as leader of SeepeopleS. It functions as an avenue for him to examine the emotional and physical connections he has with his audience and his fellow musicians. He’s given us another look inside the album with “Lots of People”, a bounding, percussive thump of a track. Mutated vocals rise and fall against fuzzed-out atmospherics while harmonies just seem to disappear into the shadows surrounding the music. It feels like an anthem for whatever cause contours to your heart, a walloping rush of sound that blasts away all hesitancy.
The accompanying animated video was created by Jack Powell and provides an appropriate, and perfectly skewed, visual balance to the energetic movements of the music. The gothic-meets-dustbowl aesthetics of the clip shouldn’t really work with the track, but somehow together, they elevate one another, creating a worn and weary world where literal fires burn in our hearts and identity becomes muddied in a sea of nameless people.
Watch the video below.
Field Guide for Survival in This Dying World, the new album from SeepeopleS, is due out October 7 via RascalZRecordZ. Follow SeepeopleS on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
