Chris DeLine

“Between the guns, booze, and stitches it’s been hard to piece it all together,” explained Hans Condor recently, discussing the production of the new video for “Time Rhyme or Reason.” “It got pretty messy for the two days we filmed it.” What might first appear as nothing more than a booze-soaked warzone is actually a fairly conceptual piece however. Directed by Maria “Poni” Silver of the Ettes, the idea sparked earlier this year following the devastating flooding in Nashville. Decisively, Condor added, “She really fucked shit up in good way.” Produced by Alexandro Silver Duran and edited by Eric Johnson, the video was shot in bassist Erik Holcombe’s backyard in East Nashville. Poni recently touched base via email, explaining the build up from the moment of inspiration to the creation of the clip; here’s what she had to say:

“I had the idea for the video after a trip to the recycling center in East Nashville. It was right after that flood last spring. Needless to say, the recycling center turned into mountains of metal. It was eerily beautiful. There was a mountain of refrigerators connected by a metal valley to a hill of air conditioners. Destroyed washers and dryers stacked up like Legos. And then there was this wall of TVs. It stood quite tall and just kind of beamed in the sunlight.

I stood there for a while just kind of staring at. Then I decided it needed to be destroyed… broken down somehow, and I needed to film this happening. It reminded me of those early MTV bites where someone would say “I want my MTV” and then smash a TV with a sledge hammer or something. I wanted it to be a nod to that.

I knew Hans Condor was the band for the job. After a few weeks of collecting old TVs off the side of the road (we got kicked out of the recycling center—apparently, you’re allowed to drop stuff off there but you can’t TAKE things), we set up in Erik’s backyard. There were all sorts of other goodies back there as well so we all just went at it and added some personal touches (like Rodger’s TV drum kit and Charles’ bottle mic).

The biggest challenge was actually trying to hold them back from destroying the set too fast before we were done shooting. In fact, on the very first take we did of the whole song, Erik landed on a broken TV and had to go to the emergency room and get 17 stitches on his hand. You can see that his hand is wrapped up for half the video. Even when it happened though he just kept smashing things with his good hand, Viking style.

We came back the second day and this time they wore the industrial gloves and goggles I had gotten them. We had a couple of helmets too and luckily there were no more major injuries. So after I felt like I had enough takes, we put the song on a loop and I just let them go at it. It was amazing to record them go ape shit on these objects, especially when they started getting creative how they destroyed. At the end, the wall was gone and all that was left was a rubble of metal and glass. Just like I imagined it. My brother and his partner are Two Track Productions which produced and edited it. I’m very happy with the end result.”

“Time Rhyme or Reason” is available on Hans Condor’s new album Sweat, Piss, Jizz & Blood.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]