Matt Bowles did not have much to work with. The director’s read on The Venus Children, going into the “Amygdala” video, was “a bunch of silly boys with no money,” so he built the shoot around exactly that. “The concept was born out of necessity as much as anything,” he says. He sent the band off to find a windowless room in Leeds where they wouldn’t offend the general public, locked off the camera, and let them fill the space however they liked.
What came out of that room premieres here today.
“Amygdala” is the Leeds group’s second single, out June 12th, following “Rollercoaster” from early May. It keeps the warping guitars, driving rhythm section and shifting time signatures from the first single and pushes harder into them, this time with more cowbell, bigger riffs and a chorus hook the band aim, in their own words, at the medial temporal lobes. The song plays like a panic attack trapped inside a children’s TV show: warped visuals, nervous energy, theatrical chaos, fear and instinct and emotional collapse turned into something grotesque, playful and oddly euphoric.
The brain’s fear centre is the whole point. “We wanted to make a song that felt like you were going crazy with repeated ear worms, big riffs and weird sounds,” says bassist Rob. “Alongside the cult like chant Amygdala. As if we are conducting a summoning of the brain.”
The video commits to it. Commanded, once again, by the Chicken of Chance, the band turned up in costume and let the windowless room do the rest. “The music video needed to get our playful energy across, so we wore a load of daft outfits and fully leaned into the chaos,” says guitarist Alex.
“We also pay tribute to the Chicken of Chance, with Cal dressing up as our saviour.” Bowles describes the brief in plainer terms: a controlled environment the band could fill at will. “The process was really about capturing that energy and shaping the chaos into something vaguely coherent.”
“Amygdala” was recorded with James Atkinson at The Stationhouse in Leeds, the same producer behind the band’s debut sessions and a regular on the harder, faster side of the UK underground, with credits including Hi Vis, Fucked Up, Higher Power and Chubby And The Gang.
It’s the second single from the band’s groove-driven debut album, “The Ingredient”, due this summer. “Amygdala” hits streaming on June 12th.
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