Movie Club
Black Mamba (Tasty Wax Records)
There's a lot going on with this new 7" vinyl release from instrumental rockers Movie Club. First of all, there's a video package for the two songs, "Black Mamba" and "Python," called Grindhouse Venice. In it, guitarist Vince Cuneo is a Venice clown getting up to all sorts of shenanigans, and drummer Jessamyn Violet is an assassin taking out some local miscreants. Including (spoiler alert) the clown.
"Both videos are set in Venice and feature the band members Vince Cuneo and Jessamyn Violet," reads the press release. "This project was inspired by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's double feature Grindhouse and borrows much of the same aesthetic of scrappy old movie projectors."
There's some sort of a back story about peaches that are drugs, or drugs that are peaches. Thematically, it all seems to tie in with Violet's book Venice Peach, which we reviewed in our April issue, describing it as "a wild journey into a world of robot presidents, where 'art meets lust.'"
If all of the above sounds bonkers, that's because it is. And gloriously so. If you're worried that it's all a deliberate distraction from the actual music, don't be. This 45 stands alone quite beautifully.
Both tracks are heavy, moody and appropriately sinister. There's a grindhouse score vibe that makes sense, but the vinyl makes for a thrilling listen.
