I used to play drums. And then I moved away to college and tried guitar out. At the time, I was at the height of my immersion into country and folk with near-constant listening of Josh Ritter's Animal Years and Ryan Adams and the Cardinals' Jacksonville City Nights.
My tastes have definitely changed over time, though both of those albums are still very near and dear to me, and I think (and hope) that I've gotten to be a better musician.
This past year I started a band/group/casual musical venture thing with my very talented friend, Ari. We go by Swanfleet Imbroglia (Swanfleet being my nerdy titular contribution as it is an Elvish river in Middle Earth) At the moment, we're on a brief hiatus as she just graduated and is uber-busy filming and doing some theatre. Although this sucks, it sort of works out all right because it gives me an opportunity to do the weirder, heavier and more electronic things that I've been wanting to screw around with that just wouldn't make sense with the style of the Swanfleet songs.
Therefore, the Least of Creatures is born ("The least of creatures" comes from Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West) because going by just my name would weird me out.
The tradition with the last few Swanfleet songs was to edit vintage cartoons or educational films into music videos to accompany the song. In not wanting to do the exact same thing with the Least of Creatures, I decided to try animation out, as it's quickly becoming a serious artistic interest.
The first song is "Arrow" and I really had no idea what images would directly accompany the song rhythmically and still stand alone as moving image. I eventually decided to make it almost entirely type based with the lyrics and a huge homage to the great Saul Bass and his legendary title sequences, primarily for Otto Preminger.
I worked on the images off and on for about two weeks before bringing it into Final Cut Pro to assemble.
I'm very pleased with the results. I think the imagery is very simple and strong and the limited color scheme doesn't distract. So if you like the song, great. If you just like the image, great. If you like both, super-great!Arrow from The Least of Creatures on Vimeo.
There is definitely more on the way so keep a look out.
You can follow The Least of Creatures on Twitter @leastcreatures
--CKL--
