New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Following their recent announcement for this year's ArcTanGent Festival, Scottish post-rock band VASA are pleased to reveal a video for their brand new single 'Mini-Boss', which is out now on all good digital service providers.
The video for the single was directed by drummer Niall MacRae and Alice Restrick in the band's old rehearsal space in Glasgow, with MarcRae explaining: "Knowing I'd be directing and drumming in the video simultaneously, I wanted to go for simplicity above all—just a beautifully shot, stripped-back performance. It was pure coincidence that we ended up with our old practice place as the location (I actually wanted somewhere much, much bigger) but it thematically fit in with this pining for the past that permeates the album."
"Aesthetically, I tried to tie everything back to the visuals of the album art and went for as filmic an image as possible, harkening back to the old photos our parents took over the years that inspired all the artwork for the album. It was all made actually possible with help from my Assistant Director, Alice Restrick, who did a lovely job with the lighting, keeping my thoughts in order and pointing the monitor at me whenever I needed to see what the hell was going on."
An open letter to victims of bullying, commenting on the themes behind the single and his personal connection to this track, MacRae says:
"Mini-Boss is, at its core, about overcoming personal hurdles, where the term literally means your first ever bully—that miniature tormentor who would seem totally laughable to you now. It's a representation of those small moments made huge in your adolescent life, where your decisions allowed you to overcome strife."
"I want to start by saying that I'm not proud of my actions or condone violence here, but personally, this track reminds me of the day I confronted my pre-teen bully. Under the guise of friendship, he would often verbally abuse me and one day, in front of his 'audience', I hit my breaking point and snapped. In that moment I ran at him and kicked him so hard in the groin that he was unceremoniously taken off to hospital. After that day, he never touched me or said a word to me again. It's a bittersweet memory, as a lot of those years appear now in hindsight, but it's one of the earliest memories I can recall where I truly stood up for myself."
'Mini-Boss' is the latest single to be taken from their long-awaited second album, Heroics, which will be released on 21st February 2020 via Dome A Records.
Heroics is a sonic exploration in coming to terms with the pains of ageing by reconnecting with our own individual pasts and the histories of generations before. Marking a significant growth in the band's trademark Celtic post-rock sound, the album unlocks new depths to their creativity, drawing from the invincibility of childhood, the chaos of adolescence, and the uncertainties of adulthood.
'Mini-Boss' was a turning point for the band in the process of writing the album—over three years the quartet wrote swathes of material, but it wasn't until they finished the demo for this particular song when they finally hit their stride. "This song set the bar for the rest of the writing process," they explain. "Apart from the album opener, I think we actually scrapped everything we wrote before this track and started over. There's at least a full album's worth of unused riffs and melodies out there in the ether! All garbage."
The quartet also recently announced a run of February 2020 UK/EU tour dates and festival appearances, with select dates alongside Thank You Scientist (see below for full listings).
Heroics is released 21st February 2020 via Dome A Records
VASA Live Dates:
14/2/2020 - Mainz @ Schon Schön*
15/2/2020 - Haarlem @ Complexity Festival*
17/2/2020 - Plymouth @ Underground *
18/2/2020 - Southampton @ Joiners *
19/2/2020 - Bristol @ Exchange*
20/2/2020 - Birmingham @ Mama Roux's*
21/2/2020 - Glasgow @ Stereo^
22/2/2020 - Leeds @ Wharf Chambers^
29/2/2020 - London @
10 Years of
Chaos Festival^
20-22/8/2020 - ArcTanGent Festival 2020 ^
* w/ Thank You Scientist
^ VASA ONLY
Composed over three years, Heroics was brought to life between 45-A-Side and Trapdoor Studios with the help of producer Tom Peters (Wot Gorilla?, Alpha Male Tea Party, The Hyena Kill, Cleft, Body Hound) in the summer of 2019. The album is an ambitious concept record broken into the key stages of life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, within which the band explore a whole new range of tonality. Shifting from the childlike bounce of the title track, to the electronic pulses that ebb and flow over 'Prom Night', all the way through to the album's viciously dark yet uplifting conclusion, VASA have created a brazenly joyous yet melancholic soundscape that traverses a lifetime.
"As we grow older we often start to disconnect from our past," say the band of the record. "We are taught that in order to grow, we must leave that which came before behind. We must become adults. But, in reality, as we become older we begin to realise our parents and our grandparents have experienced this same disconnect too. The same insecurities, the same faults, the same vulnerabilities."
"This album is the emotional representation of that feeling and the rebellion against it, through the act of embracing who we never really stopped being. As such, Heroics does not aim to be one definitive story, but all of our stories. It is an invitation for the listener to come on a shared journey which delves into our collective past, where they can choose to colour in the blanks with their own experience."
Since forming in October 2011, the quartet have seen a rush of support from national press and huge swathes of the post-rock community, giving way to tour dates with experimental music heavyweights and hotly tipped newcomers such as
Black Peaks, Deafheaven, Maybeshewill, This Town Needs Guns, Brontide, Poly-Math, and Body Hound, plus appearances at ArcTanGent, T in The Park, Wickerman Festival, PORTALS and more.
Heroics is the band's first release since 2016 stand alone double A-side single 'Burst'/'Open', which was preceded only by their critically-acclaimed 2015 debut album Colours. Despite being their first ever release, in a very niche genre, the record garnered support from major national press outlets including The Independent, The
National Scot, The Scotsman, PROG magazine,
Clash Magazine, The iNewspaper, and
Total Guitar, with further coverage at The Skinny, Gold Flake Paint, and New Noise Magazine.
A continuation of their unrelentingly upbeat and joyful approach to the occasionally tawdry world of post-rock, Heroics sees them as riotous and celebratory as ever. Thankfully, despite their maturation, VASA are still the kind of band that consistently remind us that this whole music lark is meant to be fun, right?
