All Kinds of Thieves

A Fear of Music Production

San Diego band Blair Gun talks about manipulation, blast beats, and the three thousand frames of their new music video for “The Thief”.

San Diego, USA

The band has just got back from a show run along the Central Coast. How was it?

It was a great experience and definitely a bit boozy. We love San Luis Obispo and we were happy to revisit and see our old friends at Channel Frequencies who always set us up right. It was our first time in Isla Vista, but our bassist Aston used to live there so he was able to give us a tour around town to see the good sights and grub spots. It is a great place to visit as a band, it has a lot of foot traffic and local talent. It’s a never ending party.

Other than the Central Coast run, which shows have been super memorable lately?

Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles, opening for Nada Surf and playing to a packed crowd. We had never played at such a lovely downtown venue! It was close to a hometown show for us, so we had a ton of friends and family pull up. Another side of the night was getting yelled at by a parking attendant who refused to take my credit card and told me to leave. We love LA.

You are sharing the video to your song, “The Thief”. What is this song about?

All kinds of thieves… but particularly those who manipulate others emotionally and spiritually, and even more particularly charlatan televangelist James Albert Pike as seen through the eyes of Joan Didion.

How does the video represent the song? Why did you decide on doing an animated video?

The lyrics are more direct than some of the others on the album and it has a few scenes that are described explicitly and chronologically, making it feel like something that could translate well into a medium such as animation. Additionally, it’s one of our shorter tunes and my lack of animation experience meant I'd be drawing everything frame by frame and picking a longer song could mean drawing thousands more frames.

What kind of process went into making this?

I began drawing the video back in February of this year while we were still tracking the album, timing everything to an early rough demo of the song. I had only ever made some extremely short animated clips before, maybe 2-3 seconds tops, and at the time making a video around 2 minutes seemed doable. Even though it’s a simple concept, my progress was tediously slow due to my total lack of experience. I really began to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew. I picked up and put down the video multiple times until a few months ago when I upgraded to an actual animation app. Even though it would incrementally crash my ipad, I began making way faster progress and ended up actually finishing the video. Over three thousand frames… I’m super proud of it, it’s my first longer animation project with hopefully many more to come!

How does '“The Thief” stand out from your previous releases? How does it show your growth as a band?

I think The Thief is one of our heaviest, punkiest songs. It is always one of the most fun songs to play live because of how wild people go. There are alot of dynamic changes that help pull the song in a bunch of different directions to keep listeners guessing. It’s a very instrumentally tight song, but we all add our own little details. On drums we added some cowbell, an unexpected blast beat and some dramatic pauses to keep it freaky. On lead guitar, we used some new effects like glitchy feedback loops to swell some noise towards the end and take it to a chaotic climax.

What’s next for the song? What’s next for Blair Gun?

The song is out there making its own life now. We are so proud of it and will continue to support it as it grows. We hope the video can bring some attention back to the song even though it’s been out for a few months. As of right now, we are busy writing and demoing the next album. We are really making an effort to push ourselves in a new exciting direction while staying true to the sound that we have created over the last few years. Blast beats over major scales has been what we’re on right now. Given the times, it is also more important than ever to us that we use our platform, however small, for good and speak about what we truly believe in. Keep an eye on our Instagram and YouTube for new videos, live sessions, and fresh songs over the next year.