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Jan 18, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Sean Mundy Venus Furs

Montreal multi-instrumentalist, writer, and producer Paul Kasner, a.k.a. Venus Furs, has debuted the video for “New Inspiration,” premiering with Under the Radar. The video comes in the wake of Kasner’s intricately crafted 2020 debut album, Venus Furs. The self-described perfectionist spent the better part of a decade finding his intention for the project and honing its meticulous collage of psych and garage rock to a potent mix of new and old sounds. Kasner dives into the minutia of his project with dense studio craftsmanship and a deft hand on the production, finding an impassioned mix of layered sonics.

“New Inspiration,” swirls with flickering intensity, surrounded by layers of distorted guitars and a hazy psychedelic undertone. As warped and grim as the instrumental presentation is, there’s also a lush underlying beauty. As the rippling guitars and swelling organ calm, they fade into a stark, solitary piano line carrying the song to its close, fitting perfectly with the song’s somber lyrical themes. As Kasner describes the song, “This is a late-night, moody song about needing to accept that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped - watching someone go down dark or dangerous paths time and time again, and trying to help them, but not being able to if they don’t want things to change themselves. The title refers to the character’s motivation to put themselves in harm’s way - the desire to alleviate boredom in their search for new inspiration, and there’s a nod to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in the lyrics (“Casually he introduces himself, As the wild son of love and death”).”

The accompanying video from Justis Krar of IMMV Productions conjures the same nocturnal haze as the track itself, envisioning the song’s journey with distorted visions of nightlife before descending into a fractal psychedelic breakdown. Krar says of his vision for the video, “I wanted to present the visuals as a relation to both the lyrical tone and musical tone of the song. Heavily affected visual effects layered onto night time footage created a lushness that I feel when listening to the song. Ending the video with a visual effect that I’ve never seen or made before was a wonderful surprise for me, and I think matches the madness at the end of the song.” Check out the video below and stream Venus Furs, out now via Kasner’s Silk Screaming Records.

Read our full review of Venus Furs here.