Third Man recording group Wolf Eyes have unleashed a brilliantly barmy new music video for “T.O.D.D.” featured on the venerable band’s acclaimed 2015 label debut, I AM A PROBLEM: MIND IN PIECES.
“T.O.D.D.” is directed by Paris-based artist/filmmaker Will Benedict, in collaboration with Copenhagen-based artist Steffen Jørgensen. The music video – in which an alien discusses issues surrounding assimilation in an extra global context while drawing parallels with Europe's current migrant crisis with television talk show host Charlie Rose – will be included at the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, curated by New York-based collective DIS and continuing through the summer.
Founded two decades ago in Ann Arbor, Wolf Eyes recently headlined the first (and last) Trip Metal Fest, a remarkable Detroit gathering of experimental artists, noise rockers, and sonic improvisers. The three-day event received widespread national coverage, including a major feature in the New York Times.
I AM A PROBLEM: MIND IN PIECES was among 2015’s most highly praised recordings, proclaimed by The Quietus as “a must for all fans of fucked-up outsider rock.” The album “contains all the ominous suspense of a classic horror movie,” wrote Pitchfork. “Each track oozes with eerie tones and seat-edge momentum, such that something terrifying seems to always lurk around the corner.” I AM A PROBLEM: MIND IN PIECES “evokes classical Wolf Eyes in ways that count,” noted SPIN in an 8-out-of-10-rated rave, “but under that rich seasoning of clatters, slithers, feedback, and digested vocal malaise writhe songs.” “A gasping, heaving monster,” applauded Stereogum. “Parts of it sound a bit more like rock music than the things this band has made before.” Paste celebrated Wolf Eyes’ “utter disdain for normalcy,” noting that “hooking up with Third Man…might indicate immortality for an ensemble that could have just decided to fleece the noise genre’s fast-decaying corpse.”