CrowJane has released her new EP titled ‘Bound To Me’ as well as her new video ‘Destroy’ via Kitten Robot Records. From the launch of ‘Butterflies’ (track one), I knew I was in for a deep and vivid concept. The tone set is as dark as it is amazing. Originality runs throughout and lets your imagination run wild.
Each track sets a deeper and darker tone and can run in any order, because like all talented artists, this is what creativity above all else sounds like.
‘Destroy’ presents a retro style video steeped in electronica and immersed in grainy tape fueled lines of scan and waves of droning decadence with an almost quasi amateurish feel that works on many levels.
Trendsetter, moodsetter, or bloodletter, CrowJane is an artist that stays with you after the playlist stops.
About CrowJane & ‘Bound To Me’
Embracing the frenetic punk aesthetic and tribal and slinky darkness of both bands, “Destroy” captures a side of CrowJane that she hasn’t explored before. “I went to Paul [Roessler, producer] and told him that I wanted to write a song that is dancier than my past releases with a synth pulse, which is one of my favorite things about the band Suicide, with a Siouxsie Sioux vocal style.”
Its accompanying video helps embody this perfect marriage of both styles with scenes that could have been filmed in the catacombs of punk’s late ‘70’s/early ‘80s heyday but are, in fact, live footage of recent punk shows in Los Angeles. “I wanted to make a music video that was as fun to make as the song was,” CrowJane explains. “I went around with a camcorder to different shows in LA and recorded the crowd plus the musicians. This music video is kind of a love letter to the LA underground post-punk/Synthwave/Darkwave/punk/goth scene.”
Coming from a visual art background of surrealism and horror, she has simultaneously built a career as a professional horror effects makeup artist and a recording artist. This unlikely background helped foster an outsider musical sensibility that is perfectly balanced by an encyclopedic knowledge of the byways and back roads of punk and death rock, both historic and in LA’s contemporary underground music scene, of which her bands Egrets on Ergot, Prissy Whip and The Deadbeats have been an integral component for the past decade.
“I have been a part of the scene since 2012 when my first band Egrets on Ergot first started playing shows,” she recalls. “I’ve gotten to know so many talented and cool people. I was inspired by old ‘80s videos that are just a hodge podge of people dancing and showcases their style of the time. I feel like most people I know are watching old footage and inspired by music from the past. I would like to recognize music from now more. So a part of me thought about possible future generations, watching this video and seeing a time capsule of this current LA underground scene.”
Her new EP Bound To Me is a five-track deep dive into the mindset of CrowJane, embracing Darkwave, Goth, Tribal, Synthpop and Postpunk. The opening track “Butterflies” provides a stylistic link to her critically-hailed debut album Mater Delarosa, following in its subterranean dance music footsteps. Ethereal and rhythmic, “Butterflies” is a percussive entry point for the EP, setting the minor chord stage that CrowJane dances on. The Janes Addiction-rave up of “Ides of March” chimes in guitar textures while her layered vocals recall Perry Farrell’s high-registered howls. The atmospheric closer “Broken Angel” has an cathedral-esque expansiveness that recalls early 4AD. “The new songs I’ve been writing are a big mixed bag of all different kinds of genres,” she confesses. “Not that this is anything out of the ordinary for me, but I think some of the types of sounds are going to be a surprise based off of the first record I put out.”
Coming from the aforementioned visual art background of surrealism and horror, CrowJane has built a career as a professional effects makeup artist who has worked on Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3, American Horror Stories, Mulan, HBO’s Winning Time, The Orville, FX’s Dave, We Need To Do Something, Cheaper By The Dozen, Dancing With The Stars, The Last Of Us: Part II, Star Wars: Fallen Order, and more alongside her music career. This wide-ranging background in visual arts helped foster an outsider musical sensibility perfectly balanced by an encyclopedic knowledge of the byways and back roads of LA’s contemporary underground music scene in punk and death rock, of which her bands have been immersed in for the past decade.