What is a band? Many things but bands are definitely my love language and the only way I know how to make friends, so while alive but adrift in Australia in 2016-2018 I had to make five. BB and the Blips was one of them.
Using unreleased tracks we recorded in 2019 and discarded footage taken for a video that was never made, I have produced a film in four parts, a visual swansong single; visongle, if you will.
Here’s THE SICKNESS.
To sidestep an almost gauche level of prescience it feels necessary to state the song ‘The Sickness’ was written in 2019, so it is about the ongoing AIDS pandemic and who gets to sleep through social murder rather. Then, as now, they let it happen. ‘Blame Game’ is a meditation about people-pleasing set to a trippy trip down the southern hemisphere’s longest travelator while ‘Colour Theory Made Easy’ is a re-read of the acknowledgements page of a weird book by Jim Ames who had some freaky ideas about the spectrum. Shame Job is the title track from our 2018 LP and acts as an epilogue here.
In the videos I wanted to capture something of what I learnt as an uninvited guest on stolen land during a two year up-close encounter with the perverse and perverted consequences of colonisation, of course, but also pay tribute to the hot truths of the fastest and most generous political education I got from people who easily broke my meters for what is possible within the parameters of Being Mates (for my money the most romantic kind of love there is). I received and gave so much l-u-v in the chaotic corners of a city that absolutely should not exist but so very deeply does. This is for them.
I recorded these songs the last time the five of us (Rowena, Will, Max and Ben) were in a room together in a side street in Marrickville next to a cute brothel with a palm tree in the yard twice the height of the roof, using my very limited but highly tailored recording knowledge based on a trusted if deeply flawed principle: learn only what you need to know to do the job. This has been my first time working with moving image and I’ve taken the same approach, which is one reason it took me a year. Working with old footage shot by an old love was not always easy, finding the gumption to even unzip the WeTransfer and look backwards took me four months. If you want to process some difficult memories I recommend going frame by frame. In life, love, and video scraps: the fuzzy clunk, uneven surfaces and creaking levels are features not bugs, O.K!
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If I close my eyes and focus I can easily smell hot Sydney concrete and my friends’ salty bodies crammed in the back of Yellow Yolanda (spot her in the third film) on the way back from a beach.
This project, conducted entirely solo and in weather below ten degrees, taught me a nice lesson: When you realise your own role in every good time you’re ever had you’ll never be lonely again.
Hope is a prism and punk is a document.
I’m very ready to let these songs go now, and would love to know what you think.
Here is the Sickness, a film in four parts.
Chapter I : The Sickness
Chapter 2: Blame Game
Chapter 3: Colour Theory Made Easy
Epilogue: Shame Job
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Credits
All songs by BB and The Blips: Rowena, Max, Ben, Will and Bryony.
1,2 & 3 Recorded by Bryony Beynon in April 2019
Mixing by Gramrcy and mastering by Sned 2020
Shame Job originally appeared on BB and The Blips - Shame Job LP Thrilling Living Records in 2018
Films edited by Bryony Beynon in Berlin 2020-21
Original Footage shot on unceded Gadigal, Ngunnawal and Wiradjuri land by Ben Fordree
Lettering, additonal footage and music by Bryony Beynon
Kaposi’s Sarcoma Endoscopy by Dr Monzu Ahmed
Featured artworks by
Tim Guider (Domain Expressway Travelator Mural)
Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams
Participatory Community Embroidery Project facilitated by Liam Benson
Richard Lewer
‘Con-Tex’ prison-made australian flag property of Zephyr Pavey
Sculptures by William Ricketts
& others (as yet) unknown
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Blessings to you. More actual words soon.