Iguana Post “Below the Hinterlands” Video Filmed in Quarantine
By now the ‘quarantine video,’ as a trope with band members filming themselves individually on phones playing a song and then splicing that footage together either to look like a Zoom call or in time with music, is a familiar enough sight. It will be years if not decades before all the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown are played out, and so it seems extra fitting that Iguana‘s “Below the Hinterlands” video also brings a reckoning with history. Presented across the four minutes of sweetly melodic fuzzadelia of the song itself, “Below the Hinterlands” shows us not just the band going through their parts, but also a bit of their hometown in Chemnitz, located in what was formerly East Germany before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I remember watching the Berlin Wall fall on television — certainly an amazing time to be alive, especially if you were a Scorpions fan — but was too young to really understand the political and social ramifications of what I was seeing. To my newly-10 eyes it was clearly important, but mostly because adults said it was. It’s been the better part of 29 years since then, but as Iguana posits, those days are still rippling out across time and place, and they see it in their hometown.
Led by Angela Merkel, Germany has weathered the COVID-19 crisis better than many, including my own country (though of course, that’s a particularly easy standard to meet), but even so, across Europe’s liberal democracies, the clash of various social movements, populism and economic inequality continue to challenge a restless status quo. As Euro-tribal nationalism lurks in the corners — or worse, doesn’t — learning from historical context feels especially crucial. Maybe “Below the Hinterlands” doesn’t say all that, but that the band bothered to write, record and make a video for it does, I think.
Don’t treat it like a history lesson or an opinion diatribe — it’s neither — but enjoy the track on its own level. They make that easy:
Iguana, “Below the Hinterlands” official video
“Below The Hinterlands” is the secret hit of the new record “Translational Symmetry” by the Chemnitz based psych rock quartet Iguana. The video is as personal as the song itself. It is produced in corona times, socially distant, self directed, filmed independently by all 4 musicians, then loaded into the dropbox and finally delicately edited by video artist Michael Chlebusch. A corona project, so to speak. Aesthetic in the river, packed psychedelically and superimposed in several layers and metaphors (as well as the translational symmetry of the record itself), so that all details only become apparent when you look and listen several times .
Last but not least, as the name suggests, it is a view of the hinterland, Chemnitz, the east, home and its beautiful, but rather pale and shattering dark sides. Because East Germany is still swinging in the echo of the fall of the Berlin wall with a mood of openness, euphoria and departure on the one hand and burgeoning hatred and growing nationalism on the other. A worrying melange with a dangerous open ending and the hopeful wish of the song not to commit the mistakes of the past again.
Band: Iguana
Song: Below The Hinterlands
Album: Translational Symmetry
Label: Tonzonen Records 2019
Regie, artwork, animation and cut by Michael Chelbusch.
Idee and regie by Alexander Loerinczy, Camera by Iguana.
Order via Bandcamp: https://iguana.bandcamp.com/
Order via Tonzonen Records: https://www.tonzonen.de/iguana/
Iguana is:
Alexander Lörinczy | Vocals, Guitar, Synthesizer
Alexander May | Bass
Robert Meier | Drums
Thomas May | Guitar, Synthesizer
Tonzonen Records on Thee Facebooks
Tags: Chemnitz, Erfurt, Germany, Iguana, Iguana Translational Symmetry, Tonzonen Records, Translational Symmetry
