Blood Run Free (Single)

Description

Produced by Ben Fries (winner for best documentary score at SXSW)
and Philip Mossman (former guitarist of LCD Soundsytem), “Blood Run Free” is the first single of the upcoming Johns album “Forge” (Concierge Records/Lousy Moon Records).

Gender tickling frontman Johnny Dydo’s rock-hard song writing, which often draws comparisons to that of Lou Reed and David Berman of The Silver Jews, sits comfortably and intensely with the band’s Caribbean polyrhythms and otherwise beachy vibes.

“Blood Run Free” is a lyrical labyrinth of a murder ballad. Blood sprays “like demons spewed as embodied lyric of some devil’s catharsis and into that dreaded evenness,” but the protagonist’s philosophized violence points to a subtler, more elemental nightmare: “You scared of me? You should be
more scared of the wind that feeds me, and the water that puts me out.”

New York filmmaker and performance artist Erica Schreiner stays with these themes in the “Blood Run Free” music video. Seven minutes of video art shot on a VHS camera combine performance art and choreography through the use of stop motion animation to interpret the lyrics. Mossman’s swirling and soaring guitar lines are propelled by punishing drums, a galloping bass line, and auxiliary percussion. With influences ranging from post-punk to cumbia to film-score music, the sonic assault sounds nothing like any of them.