Mars Red Sky have released a series of videos over the last five or six years, and they usually follow a similar pattern. They’re homemade, comprised mostly of found footage, etc. There have been exceptions along the way, as with 2015’s clip for “The Light Beyond” (posted here), but to generalize, they’re meant to showcase the song more than a direct visual narrative. Not so the short film Alien Grounds which takes “Apex III” and “Sapphire Vessel,” the first two tracks from the Bordeaux trio’s third and latest album, Apex III (Praise for the Burning Soul) (review here), and puts them to a science fiction narrative that comes told through visuals as lush as the band’s melodies and a professional production of a level yet unseen from them.

The result of a successful crowdfunding campaign earlier this year, Alien Grounds starts out by finding a clever mechanism to tell its story, to give the viewer background and insight into what’s happening and what’s going to happen, and then unfolds in a manner complementary to the way “Apex III” acts as the intro to the album. There’s an astronaut, an apparent kidnapping, a bit of rocking out, a bit of horror, and an apparent space-cult who use the same hand-sign as the hippies from my (second) favorite episode of Star Trek — think “we reach” — and teleport the hero of our narrative to a distant planet he heretofore thought was of his own creation. Very cool stuff all around, and easy to get lost in the story as well as in the music, so mark it a double-win for the band.

After coming to the States earlier this year to play, among other gigs, The Obelisk All-Dayer and Psycho Las Vegas, the progressive heavy psych three-piece are once again hitting the road this week in Europe. They’ve got shows booked through next month and into December that you can find listed below, along with more info on the video and the cast featured.

And don’t get me wrong, I like those homemade-style videos. This is just something special and that’s worth pointing out.

Enjoy:

Mars Red Sky, “Alien Grounds: Apex III/Sapphire Vessel”

Cool vintage car, handsome actors, crazy spaceship, dangerous alien, odd dive bar…

ALIEN GROUNDS is based on the 2 first tracks of our last album APEX III (Praise for the Burning Soul). Directed by Sébastien Antoine.

Music: “Alien Grounds” – “Apex III” – “Sapphire Vessel”

Starring: Yan Tual, Dan Bronchinson, Victoria Cyr, Grégory Dreyfus, Jean-Claude Tisserand

MARS RED SKY Live:
Oct 27 Alte Hackerei Karlsruhe, Germany
Oct 28 Klubovna Prague, Czech Republic
Oct 29 festival Soulstone Gathering Cracow, Poland
Oct 30 Klub Firlej Wroclaw, Poland
Oct 31 Ostpol Dresden, Germany
Nov 02 La Sirène La Rochelle, France
Nov 10 6 PAR 4 Laval, France
Nov 11 La Nouvelle Vague Saint Malo, France
Nov 12 Monteray Live Stage Kyiv, Ukraine
Nov 18 CAVE A MUSIQUE Macon, France
Nov 19 FILE 7 Magny Le Hongre, France
Dec 10 PAUL B. Massy, France
Dec 16 Le Poche Bethune, France
Dec 17 La Fourmi Limoges, France

MARS RED SKY:
Julien Pras (vocals, guitar)
Jimmy Kinast (bass, vocals)
Matgaz (drums)

Mars Red Sky on Thee Facebooks

Listenable Records

Tags: Apex III (Praise for the Burning Soul), Bordeaux, France, Listenable Records, Mars Red Sky, Mars Red Sky Apex III (Praise for the Burning Soul)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2016 at 6:34 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.