Shawn Kilroy goes techno-noir in his video for “Children of the Valley of Ashes”

Shawn Kilroy | photo by Rachel Wescott | courtesy of the artist

Shawn Kilroy has been a longtime fixture in the local performing arts scene, and after a few years of making waves with his new-wave outfit Weird Hot, he’s returned to his birth name for a solo outing. The new record, All Pinocchio’s Men, came out on June 25th via Fishtown label Ghost Imprint, and finds Kilroy exploring a variety of unconventional sounds and combinations thereof – so, like, gothic disco, and psychedelic beat poetry, Lou Reed partying with the Talking Heads and whatnot.

Today, we bring you the very first – and appropriately weird – visuals from the album, a music video for the minimalist techno romp of “Children of the Valley of Ashes.” Sonically, it’s reminiscent of the pick-up punktronica nihilism of early Devo (and Philly’s Crash Course in Science for that matter). And with its pixelated layers of Kilroy upon Kilroy wandering a black and white urban dystopia, the music video reminds me of stuff I’d see on rare and badly dubbed compilations of WaxTrax Records videos from the 90s making the VHS tape trading circuit. (What the heck is up, rec.music.industrial?) 

Dave Kain of Northern Arms and BITBY fame directed the clip, and has this to say about it.

I wanted to capture the spirit of punk from an era of late night media explorations on tv and radio. When you’re 14 and live in the middle of nowhere, the closest thing to a walk around the city and its colorful characters was going around the dial until something a bit more interesting popped up; pbs short films, joe frank on the radio, etc. Because it was broadcast and not stored somewhere to access whenever, it was fleeting and incidental and special.

Check out the video (and the album art) below, and let it make for an off-kilter start to your Old Weird American Weekend. Kilroy has an instore at DiPinto Guitars on September 2nd; details and more info on that are TBD, but as soon as we have it, we’ll pass it along.