PREMIERE: FIGG Get Creative with "Black Tar of Camden Yards" Video
May 25th 2020 by Mike LeSeur
To catch you up to speed on Figg, the duo of Robin Peringer and Gilden Tunador were members of early-aughts slowcore favs Carissa’s Wierd—who, among many other things, introduced the world to Band of Horses frontman Ben Bridwell—before setting off on their own to record their self-titled debut under the new moniker Figg over a decade ago. Well, sometimes the music industry is a tough place to navigate, and things don’t always turn out as planned.
But it seems appropriate that in this moment in history, when we’re all stuck inside with nothing to do but contemplate and perhaps even unearth remnants of our pasts, the record is finally seeing the light of day. Though Peringer’s resume also includes work with Modest Mouse, 764-HERO, and the Doug Martsch–fronted Treepeople, Figg sounds most closely tied to the ramshackle, string-heavy chamber pop of Carissa (OK, perhaps a bit less self-deprecating).
This familiar sound comes through on “Black Tar of Camden Yards,” a song the duo recently shared but which today gets a creative music video cobbled together by both members from their respective quarantines, with additional assistance from editor Len Burge and YouTuber Jacob the Carpetbagger. Watch the video below, and read on to hear what the band had to say about the video’s production process. Figg is out June 12—you can pre-order it here.
"It was an interesting, collaborative process to make a music video during quarantine. We began with an entirely different concept, but as soon as the quarantine started, we scrapped it, as we live in two different states and there was no way we could get together in person to film. We had to be really creative with the footage that we could shoot at home, or what was already captured.
We both love miniatures, so what started with a shot of a shelf that had an image of The Atomic Man, sparked an idealized-life, carnival-like theme. We added in overheads of a miniature carnival town, carousel, a Laughing Sally animatronic shot, and structured the storyline with Magic 8-Ball messages. Our friend Len Burge was the editor and has an interesting background in special effects and as a puppeteer for film (he worked the on-screen hands of Edward Scissorhands, for starters!). When he saw our ideas, he suggested we use some of his footage of animatronics and puppets and we continued on from there.
As we were editing, it became apparent that we needed more shots that we couldn’t film during the quarantine, and we reached out to the YouTuber Jacob the Carpetbagger. He gave his permission for us to use footage from one of his shows that was of the same place where Len had previously filmed. We were really excited that Jacob said yes, he had some lovely shots such as of the ballerinas that we knew would be perfect for this."