While his band never young beach hasn’t achieved household-name status over here in the U.S., there’s certainly still hope for Yuma Abe, both as a member of that ensemble and as a solo artist. From scanning the liner notes on his debut record under his own name, Fantasia, Abe’s enlisted Haruomi Hosono to mix the LP, while Mort Garson is among the primary inspirations—both composers seeing something of a huge cult following in recent years among listeners far too young to know these artists from their notable mid-century output.
Since revealing the project with a lead-off single featuring a much younger cult figure whose influence can also be heard all over the new album, Devendra Banhart, Abe is sharing a video for the track “Many Strange Things,” which blends Banhart’s soft freak-folk ideas with the eclectic city and space pop, respectively, of his other inspirations. Thankfully, the video shows you exactly how to move your body to this unique glut of influences.
“There’s a group that practices Tai Chi every morning at the park in my neighborhood, and one day I decided to take a plunge and join them by imitating,” the video’s director VIDEOTAPEMUSIC shares. “Slow breathing and clumsy body movements, focusing on the muscles we normally don’t pay attention to otherwise, and trying moves for the first time. Simple but strange, and it starts to become a bit fun. This feeling was very similar to when I first listened to ‘Many Strange Things,’ and that’s the moment I came up with this music video idea. We used both an 8mm film and a Hi8 camera, and the animation is by Kynan Tokoro from Ogawa & Tokoro.”
“VIDEOTAPEMUSIC made a really great video for this song. One day, I hope to sing along ‘Ai ai aiyaa’ with everyone!” Abe adds. Watch the video below—and you can pre-order the record on vinyl here.
