“Ouroboros” was the first song this version of Self-Cut Bangs wrote together. What do you remember about that moment?

For this song, I’d had the main riff dating back almost a decade but never found a way to make it work. I played it without giving it any thought and Joel kicked in with the propulsive drums instinctively. It was when Nicola chimed in with the climbing bassline and Dillon did some octave guitar work that I took out my phone and hit record to capture the magic. It felt like the song had transformed from a straight ahead rocker to something much more. We added to the arrangement over time, but I’d say that 80% of the music you hear was written within two minutes of our first real jam.

The song deals with creation, death and rebirth. How did those themes inform what you wanted the video to look and feel like?

Necessity is the mother of invention and the enemy of art is the lack of limitations. It’s one of those things where we had an elaborate video idea planned for a grant proposal and went it fell through, we knew we’d have to DIY this one.

While my default is to usually try to be funny in my music videos, “Ouroboros” always felt like it demanded something more serious and unsettling. The idea of the ouroboros (snake) and the chorus of “the all is one” definitely were anchor points for the visuals.

Beyond that, the experience of seeing my bandmate and wife become a mother–the beauty of growth and the anxiety and fear of the bloody reality of labour–played in too. I wanted that kind of otherworldly beauty you can find when you really look at everyday things, mixed with a feeling of wanting to look away but not being able to.

Also, the whole thing kind of reminds me of the mashed up found footage clips Much Music would play as stingers around commercial breaks. Hah.

Where did all of the found footage come from, and what were you looking for?

I’ve always been fascinated by the Prelinger Archives, a huge database of ephemeral films like educational videos, government-funded films and all sorts of found footage. I combed through hundreds of hours of footage looking for imagery that felt like it would either reinforce a lyric or the rhythm of the song, or images that were tied to broad themes of growth, decay, assimilation. It ended up meaning a lot of footage of plant life and microscopic life forms.

Some of the images initially feel random or disconnected. Is there a hidden logic connecting them?

There are anchor points, where it felt like certain images needed to go with certain parts of the song. From there, it was mostly an exercise of free association, responding either to the song or the images that came immediately before.

For example, the image of the lab rat biting a wire is followed by a kind of retro future shot of a scientific lab…connecting to the idea of “the all is one,” of how the smallest creature can be powerful enough to take down an entire building of more modern tech.

The editing itself feels cyclical, with images consumed and transformed by other images. Was that intended as an extension of the ouroboros?

Very much so. The idea was for the video to self-reference itself over time, to add layers of subconscious meaning as it went on…for the overlaid and background imagery to re-contextualize the foreground imagery. For it all to bleed together and be seen as not as disparate as it first looks.

Last time RANGE spoke with Self-Cut Bangs, you were making a video for every song on Circle Around The Free. Has your approach changed since then?

The main thing is, I decided to never again commit to making twelve music videos for an album. I went a little insane doing the bulk of that…which might partly explain the imagery in this one.

How much does “Ouroboros” introduce us to the version of Self-Cut Bangs we’ll hear on Growth Spurts?

I’d say that, despite this song maybe sounding more sinister than a lot of the rest of the record, it best captures the main propulsive engine behind the songwriting throughout. It’s a bit of a new musical mission statement: a big, loud outburst of creativity that came quickly and authentically from the five of us.

Finally, is there one detail or connection buried in the video that you hope people notice on a second or third watch?

Life is beautiful and messy and gross and scary and joyous. I think that some of what I unconsciously brought to it was seeing the world through my toddler’s eyes and how it makes you look at literally everything a little differently. Not taking any of it for granted. So, I dunno, maybe I’d just suggest role-playing as a toddler?