Joesef is a young soul with an old soul who has mastered new soul. Since shining on the BBC's Sound of 2020 survey just 9 months after his first gig, the Scottish singer-songwriter has released a couple of singles and fire EPs, broken his pandemic-induced leave of absence with a magical performance in the woods at last summer's Latitude, toured with his band and Mercury Prize winner Arlo Parks, and played a sold-out show at Barrowlands. Today, he finally unveils the video for his new and gorgeous single, East End Coast. We’re in for a treat, a tender moment of unity.
“It was important to me that the video for East End Coast had a sense of urgency and captured a feeling that was true to the song and its meaning. Inspiration came from films like Kids, Trainspotting, Beats, etc. and it's been great fun to create this world for the music to live in,” explains the singer about the video, another collaboration with director Luis Hindman.
The video takes place during a beautiful scene of a night in a club where shadows and lights intertwine to create the perfect context for the intimacy shared by some of the characters. The piece has been directed by Hindman with great taste for subtle imagery and attentive treatment of lighting. Club scenes from Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998) and Summer of '85 (François Ozon, 2020) are brought together here to portray the rush of the unexpected, the powerful impact of a stranger's gaze that you can't take your eyes off, the unprecedented comfort of embracing a stranger in a crowd of people moving to the rhythm of shadows.
The video takes place during a beautiful scene of a night in a club where shadows and lights intertwine to create the perfect context for the intimacy shared by some of the characters. The piece has been directed by Hindman with great taste for subtle imagery and attentive treatment of lighting. Club scenes from Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998) and Summer of '85 (François Ozon, 2020) are brought together here to portray the rush of the unexpected, the powerful impact of a stranger's gaze that you can't take your eyes off, the unprecedented comfort of embracing a stranger in a crowd of people moving to the rhythm of shadows.
The inspiration for the song comes from Shuggie Bain, by Booker Price winner Douglas Stuart. “I've never read anything so powerful personally. There's a part where Shuggie gets beaten up and sticks his head in the fridge, sees the blood and thinks it's pretty; then he berates himself for thinking that, because us East End kids aren't meant to think that stuff,” shares Joesef.
Club culture is often seen in the media as a cubicle of trends, drugs and the shallow dark side of the night where people abandon themselves, but the dance floor is a space where feelings come and go. And this cinematic is aptly portrayed by Hindman in the video, not only recalling scenes similar to Shuggie Bain's, but also capturing the importance of the magnetism that boys making out with other boys can safely experience in the clubs featured in other novels such as Andrew Durbin's McArthur Park or Jeremy Atherton's Gay Bar: Why We're Dating.
Club culture is often seen in the media as a cubicle of trends, drugs and the shallow dark side of the night where people abandon themselves, but the dance floor is a space where feelings come and go. And this cinematic is aptly portrayed by Hindman in the video, not only recalling scenes similar to Shuggie Bain's, but also capturing the importance of the magnetism that boys making out with other boys can safely experience in the clubs featured in other novels such as Andrew Durbin's McArthur Park or Jeremy Atherton's Gay Bar: Why We're Dating.
A generation that has grown up seeing Robyn Dancing on her own as a Virgina Woolf-like interpretation of liberatory spaces. Holding another person's neck while kissing is such a high that everyone deserves to experience this kind of freedom once in a lifetime. It's a feeling of belonging that has been recreated in many different ways but never gets old. We never thought that the greatest revolution we could make was to love each other and rub our lips with another as the lights colour our faces while we stop time to feel the music and sweat out a new world.
It doesn't really matter how it ends. What matters is that these scenes become a solid memory in our youth that gives meaning to all this uncertainty. But as for Joesef's future, it's a bare, tepid step after an impressive early career development. East End Coast, along with the upbeat, eighties 21st century club-meets-twentieth century It's Been a Little Heavy Lately, the artist heads into a debut album having conquered our hearts with a promising set of new songs that are sure to recreate incredible scenes from his life.
It doesn't really matter how it ends. What matters is that these scenes become a solid memory in our youth that gives meaning to all this uncertainty. But as for Joesef's future, it's a bare, tepid step after an impressive early career development. East End Coast, along with the upbeat, eighties 21st century club-meets-twentieth century It's Been a Little Heavy Lately, the artist heads into a debut album having conquered our hearts with a promising set of new songs that are sure to recreate incredible scenes from his life.
