Multi-instrumentalist Erin Birgy has been making music under the moniker Mega Bog for a decade now, blending pop aesthetics with an edgy sci-fi sensibility. She’s following 2017’s Happy Together soon with her fifth album, Dolphine, and today we see the video for its opening track “For The Old World.”

According to the press release, Birgy’s new album was inspired by the emotions felt following the death of her childhood horse, Rose, enduring two abortions, and just living through this contentious cultural moment. Fittingly titled, the song has a retro flair, incorporating flute melodies and ’70s-reminiscent guitar and bass work.

The accompanying video has a cultish vibe to it a la Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, especially the scenes of medievally dressed characters running through a desert-like hillside. The lens is grainy, amplifying the surreal quality of Birgy staring wistfully through a sheer curtain after getting blood poured all over her. It’s bizarre, but fits perfectly for the vibe of this song.

Here’s Birgy with more:

When I was writing “For The Old World,” the song was kind of oozing out, sneering and murky, sort of like the feeling I sometimes get when I’ve spent so much time (sometimes years) on the quality/integrity/authenticity of a project, whether it’s a social/romantic/friendship or music/meaning/impressions—and then something really hits you in a devastating way, and you’re on this gnarly bender where you become deliberately evil to reflect the absurdity of the whole story. Like walking out of the shower, shaved and sudsed, the light is glowing, the thunderstorm is over, and you trip in a patch of poison ivy and watch your skin boil, torturing that idyllic splinter of peace.

The video takes some space from the song’s imagery, and experiments with stories that already exist, to play with our perspectives of the impressions they made, by mirroring the alien worlds in my literal backyard, sort of saying goodbye to these beautiful scenes and environments that have been so dangerous and healing. We tried to visually inspire the jumps from the old and new worlds that are a part of a dreaming human’s bubble of thought.

And here’s bonus context from director Laura Conway:

My job as a filmmaker was simpler with “For The Old World” because the song is so cinematic. It moves, swells, and progresses narratively like a film does. Working with Erin was a great pleasure; they have a strong sense of their aesthetic, and so the project was a true collaboration. Erin, my DP Anna Winter, and I all came to the table with references and visual ideas we wanted to pull from; Sergei Parajanov, Lynch, Ingmar Bergman, Michael Powell. The actual production was a filmic journey from Denver to New Mexico. We stopped to film misty landscapes, passing wild mustangs and hiked to film mountainous locations. We shot digitally because of financial constraints, but the sharpness of the digital image was too harsh “For The Old World” and so I printed the digital image onto Agfacolor Film, a discontinued German film stock. I hand processed the film and so you can see air bubbles, dust and other “mistakes”. With film you always lose something and gain something. We lost detail and gained warmth, imperfections, and the movement of the silver halide film grain.

Check out “For The Old World” below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “For The Old World”
02 “I Hear You Listening (To The Bug On My Wall)”
03 “Diary Of A Rose”
04 “Dolphine”
05 “Left Door”
06 “Spit In The Eye Of The Fire King (By Ash Rickli)”
07 “Truth In The Wild”
08 “Shadows Break”
09 “Untitled (With ‘C’)”
10 “Fwee Again”
11 “Waiting In The Story”
12 “Diary Of A Rose (Edit)”

Dolphine is out 6/28 via Paradise Of Bachelors. Pre-order it here.

CREDIT: Indigo Sparke