Sen Morimoto announced their new album Time Is On Your Side last month. The lead single "Overthinker" was a tranquil, introspective number, and now they're back with "Chewing Gum," another quietly beautiful tune.
"This song is all about playing with time," the Chicago-based musician says. "It feels like a conversation between past and present versions of myself, and the arrangement literally plays with time in the sense that each of the instruments is played in its own time signature, or its own interpretation of the time signature. All of the opposing meters meet back up occasionally like old friends. Kaina [Castillo] was kind enough to add her vocals to the chorus. We always laugh when we record vocals together because our voices sound so much alike that we can't tell who's who."
"I had given up on an idea for the 'Chewing Gum' visual that fell through, but Kaina saved the day with some video of a wild sunset she captured in Massachusetts," they add. "My brother Yuya called from Japan with an idea to animate a wad of gum singing the song. I knew nothing about stop-motion animation, and I was running out of time so it sounded impossible, but I couldn’t get the image out of my head that night. The next morning I went and bought a bunch of Silly Putty, and a gnarly amount of Big League Chew and taught myself how to animate. The resulting wonky animation mixed with live action footage reminds me of super early youtube videos, or kinda warped 90's Nickelodeon stuff."
Watch below.
Time Is On Your Side is out 10/23 on Morimoto's own Sooper Records.
