The Brvtalist is pleased to premiere a new video from Zachery Allan Starkey. BRIGHT FUTURE is the 6th single from Starkey’s critically acclaimed album, Fear City, and follows successful collaborations with New Order’s Bernard Sumner and previous singles XXX and No Security, which was also premiered by The Brvtalist. Directed by noted New York creative director Steve Celestin, whose neon drenched, rain soaked visions of late night New York City perfectly capture the atmosphere of Starkey’s songwriting. The video also incorporates New York street documentary footage shot by Starkey himself, capturing the burnt out, busted, contemporary night time streets of the Big Apple, continuing the documentary aspect of Starkey’s previous FEAR CITY videos, whilst combining seamlessly with Celestin’s cinematic approach.
The result is a fully immersive experience which takes us through the underbelly of New York and into the dark spaces that come alive at night. The song itself is mutant versions of techno, electro and disco which carries Starkey’s love of the 80’s while still making it undeniably current. The synth lines will infect your system and the hook, “We Get High, that’s Life” is no doubt a motto for our times.
From the artist:
“‘BRIGHT FUTURE’” was one of the most fun songs to record for the FEAR CITY album,” Starkey says. “I played all of the modular synth parts and sequencer parts by hand, in real time. I did the same with the synth bass parts and the synth hooks in the chorus, all played by hand. I love playing bass guitar, and this track provided an opportunity for me to come up with a dumb, mean, nasty bassline. I wrote the lyrics for “BRIGHT FUTURE” about this after hours club I go to in Brooklyn. It’s an old strip club and has no windows. It’s a really down and dirty spot, you get all types in there. Gangsters, artists, drag queens, sex workers, drug dealers, rough street guys. These street guys, they identify as straight during the day, but late at night, after partying, they totally get into some hot action with other guys. There’s about every drug imaginable in this place. It would start as a clubby, dance party type of thing, but the later in the night you went, it just got crazier, people having sex right in the middle of the dance floor, people rolling around the ground on K. There’s a back room where people go to get high, have sex, whatever. The floor is covered with used condoms, and there’s always this one queen back there, and she’d have all these party drugs in her purse, that’s who ‘Mother Mary’ in the song is based on, and she would give you what you wanted, but she could also be really vicious. I knew this guy in the after hours joint, he was a coke dealer, always down on his luck, always in dumb love, and he just made bad decisions, over and over again. He ended up getting knifed out in East New York, in a drug deal gone bad. So I wrote “BRIGHT FUTURE” about this guy and this after hours spot. The song is also about partying and having a good time at night because there isn’t much of a future to look forward to. It’s the more fun sequel to the song I did with Bernard Sumner, ‘Fear City”, which explores similar territory. During the pandemic, this sort of late night action has increased in New York.”
Starkey stresses that independent venues and bars in New York and Berlin were essential to the “BRIGHT FUTURE” single and video project. “I want to give a huge thank you to Andrew Jigalin and Clay Adamczyk at Dream Baby Dream in Berlin”, Starkey says. “Clay and Alex have been extremely supportive of my work and the entire FEAR CITY album, and Dream Baby Dream DJ Paul Hinzer was the first person to play ‘BRIGHT FUTURE”’ in a DJ set , he was the first to suggest that I release it as a single, so I thank all of them. I also want to thank Gerard McNamee and his bar East Village Social in Manhattan’s East Village, because Steve and Mahdi and I brainstormed a lot of ideas for this video there. Special thanks and inspiration to the Gold Sounds crew (especially Queen Lucille and Eugene) and Hart Bar crew (James, Brian, and Morgan) in Brooklyn as well, because they helped me get vibes for the video. James Cypress and Uncle John at Clockwork in the LES appear in the video as well, and we thank them for their vibe.”
Fear City is out now and you can get yours on Bandcamp.
-JRS
photo by Steve Celestin