WL//WH Premiere: ADMIN Builds a Glitchy Infinite Realm for “Marathon Times” (Official Video)

photo by @jbuschardt

WL//WH is pleased to welcome ADMIN, the Brooklyn, New York-based Post Punk four piece (featuring members of local mainstay outfits such as Monograms, Grim Streaker, and Balaclava), made of Piyal Basu (Drums), Arif Hama (Bass), Amelia Hazen (Guitar, Vocals), and Ian Jacobs (Vocals, Synth, Sampler), to the blog with a premiere of the DIY Official Video for “Marathon Times”, lifted from last June’s second 4-track EP, “Mirrored Construct”, via Abandon Everything Records.

Incorporating post-punk angular riffs, visceral lyrics, layers of synth textures and propulsive drum beats, ADMIN shape-shifts into a singular musical concept that hits with grit, precision and connectivity, finding in the live dimension its natural habitat.

“Frontman Ian Jacob’s direct-to-camera stare goads and provokes from the start, and by using slow-motion and glitched-out computer-generated backgrounds, the band walks and glides through a universe that feels almost suspended in time. Sparse instrumentation, brooding vocals, and an underlying sense of unease create a slow-burning atmosphere that steadily builds toward its inevitable breaking point. Then everything erupts….The song’s explosive crescendo transforms the track into a full-force post-punk assault using propulsive drums, jagged guitar riffs, and a relentless wall of sound colliding in a release that feels intensely vigorous”

“Marathon Times” lets prominent, magnetic male vocals, backed by a blurry, vibrant chorus, take center stage to talk about finding clarity and purpose through silencing the mind, set over a secretive, tensile slowly building up backdrop, punctuated by a sonorously rounded, pinpoint bass line, and scattered, crisp percussions, laced with a buzzy slew of nostalgic dimensional keyboards, and sparse, sparkling to wailing high guitar reverbs, erupting at 2:42 into a excruciating, stabbing release of pent-up tension, to get back on track with a winding droning fade.

The video mirrors the song’s transformation, capturing the tension between isolation and release that sits at the heart of the track. Moving from an intimate setting as frontman Ian Jacobs communicates the lyrics to camera “Run, Run, Run until you walk away…” until it moves towards something frantic and physical and as the song accelerates, so does the visual language.

In the DIY Official Video, ADMIN performs “Marathon Times” wearing coordinated utility jumpers with reflective lines of fabric against a thoughtful computer-generated backdrop. The mood is serious and focused as Ian Jacobs looks straight into the camera and softly sings “wake up the silence” before multiplying trace overlays combine with mirror reflections and symbolic red and blue colors, to expand the mind and perception in sync with the soundtrack.

We wanted to build a world that wasn’t real for this video, a world that has no beginning or end. Using the composited backgrounds in a glitchy-infinite-realm seemed like a great avenue to do that”, frontman Ian Jacobs explains. “We also knew we wanted everyone and everything to feel like it was moving forward in the video, to give that illusion of inertia, and to reference the lyrics… hence the walking and running. It definitely took a while to figure out how to capture that and frame it all properly, which I could explain but we’ll just chalk that up to good old-fashioned Hollywood magic.

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