Fader

Remember all those music videos from the early 90s with singers and bands in hazy, flowery atmospheres? Blind Lemon? The Lemonheads? The Posies? They almost always had the band hanging out in picturesque fields seen through fisheye lenses and dappled lighting. Likewise enamored with spooky moods, Sahra Motalebi describes her new Brett Milspaw-directed video for "Secret", from her forthcoming Tender Mortal Means EP, as "an unidentified 80s/90s melange." But it's no blank imitation—she updates the dappled look with crystallized fade outs, muted shades of pink and green, all a nice parallel to such a lush song.

Sahra Motalebi wears a lot of black and wiggles her toes before songs. Last night at the Clemente Soto Velez Theater in New York's Lower East Side she performed shrouded in sheen and fretless bass. She sings like a calm banshee, little whirls and twirls, finger details and summoning. She has a sense of slow drama uninjected into much modern music, stern and unshakeably so, unfancy and deep. It's warming to see that. Her songs are bizarre, hand drum and violin voodoo chants. Someone told us recently that he was happy art was moving in a direct that favored a little bit of unfinished fringe. That's chill, but a little polished serious is nice, too. Check Sahra Motalebi's Gen F after the jump, along with some of Gabriele Stabile's photo outtakes. more...

We stumbled across Sahra Motalebi's new Blankenship EP at Other Music last week, thought the cover looked cool, then listened to the music inside. And guess what? It also sounds cool. Amazing how that works. Motalebi formed the Static Recital with Lansing-Dreiden's Jorge Elbrecht last year to release her music without industry interference, which means occasionally you get free songs. This one, "Pearling," is fucking awesome and elicited calls of Kate Bush and Sugarcubes when we played it in the office, which both puts her in good company but also describes her skewed take on pop music. And because she doubles as an artist who's shown work at New York's Rivington Arms gallery, Motalebi's video for "Pearling," directed by Brett Milspaw, is equally skewed and beautiful.

Download: Sahra Motalebi, "Pearling"