Exclusive: Ben Seretan Shares “Rain & Cicadas” Video, Animated Using The Sims
Image courtesy of the artist
Ben Seretan’s forthcoming Cicada Waves, out April 30 via NNA Tapes, is equal parts instrumentation and ambience. Recorded in Georgia’s Appalachian woods using a 100-year-old Steinway, the album finds Seretan improvising on piano as if in conversation with the noises of nature, creating a supremely peaceful aural partnership between artist and environment. Following “Fog Rolls Out Rabun Gap,” “8pm Crickets” and “11pm Sudden Thunderstorm,” fourth single “Rain & Cicadas” premieres at Paste today (April 13) alongside its gently psychedelic music video, animated mostly using The Sims by Bahareh Khoshooee.
“This might be my favorite track on this record because it’s the one where I play the least—it’s ostensibly a piano album, but really it documents the sound of me sitting at a piano and not playing while listening to these sounds,” Seretan tells Paste. “And these sounds are particularly dreamy—dreamy as in good, beautiful, sure, but also they sound like something from a dream, surreal and a little unreal. On the recording you can never really tell what’s rain and what’s insect wings buzzing, and together it sounds like static from a television you’re falling asleep in front of.”