Spring Silver Shares Self-Made Video for “Mountebank” Illustrating Friends’ Reactions to the Track

The visual arrives ahead of the two-year anniversary cassette reissue of their debut LP “The Natural World,” arriving August 30 via Moon Physics.
Spring Silver Shares Self-Made Video for “Mountebank” Illustrating Friends’ Reactions to the Track

The visual arrives ahead of the two-year anniversary cassette reissue of their debut LP “The Natural World,” arriving August 30 via Moon Physics.

Words: Mike LeSuer

July 26, 2021

Between their reverently weird Oneohtrix Point Never cover and its A-side collaboration with Sad13 and Bartees Strange, Silver Spring, Maryland songwriter Spring Silver gained some attention last October when the pair of songs were released just over a year after the artist dropped their debut LP The Natural World. To commemorate this anniversary, K Nkanza—who wrote, performed, produced, and mixed the full LP—will be reissuing the project next month on cassette, preceding the release with a self-illustrated visual for the post-nu-metal prog odyssey that is the opening track, “Mountebank.”

In keeping with the artist’s devout DIY mindset—which they compare to an “ironman triathlon” rather than a “cut-and-paste zine”—K created the flashing video using pull-quotes from friends’ impressions upon hearing the track for the first time, looking like a psychedelic take on SoundCloud comments popping up over the course of the track, while occasionally veering more into the territory of live stream comment boxes going off on tangents about Taking Back Sunday. “I thought it would be a neat idea to have my friends record themselves listening to ‘Mountebank’ and describing what they heard, what their thoughts were as it played,” they share. “I then took my favorite quotes and turned them into animations using a mix of illustration, print, paint, and whatever else was available. I’m really glad with how it turned out!”

Watch the visual below, and pre-order the tape here. K will also be playing a free, all-ages, outdoor (you should still wear a mask, you danguses) release show in Silver Spring this Friday—more details on the flyer below.