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New Sounds: Chew daydreams in color on ‘Blue Mounds (Never Been In Love)’

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Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.


Ninety seconds is never enough to canvass the infinite landscape of the human mind. But that’s the exact amount of time Chew gives us in his new video for “Blue Mounds (Never Been In Love)”, a dreamy deep dive into the inner workings of his own thoughts, soundtracked by atmospheric rhythms and patterns and colored by an unmistakably comforting pink.

The time restraint here is important, however, as Chew, known both as Chris Chew in his ID and as the drummer for Boston breakout act BABY!, drops the curtain on the song and video just as a flow develops. It’s as if being woken up in the middle of a dream, just as you were piecing together the necessary bits of human emotion needed to function in a world as dastardly as this.

“The song is about being buried in my own thoughts for a little too long, in that mental space where a lot of unanswerable questions and hypotheticals start to rattle around and build up in your head and overwhelm you,” Chew tells Vanyaland. “I had the idea of densely layering video and having it build up in that way, but by the end, it all kind of falls away and is back where it started since theres no ‘real’ resolution that comes from staying in that insular mental space.”

Resolution here comes via two methods: The first is to re-watch the video over and over until the textures flow over into one extended trip, and the other is to explore further the ambient musical world of Chew through his debut full-length, Stress Dream, which surfaces this Friday (November 17).

“Blue Mounds (Never Been In Love)” remains a nice introduction to Chew’s bedroom-pop, where themes of isolation and doubt align alongside bouts of confidence and awakening, tracing back to his personal decision to relocate to Boston from Connecticut a few years ago. And the video features a direct-from-Australia cameo from Chew’s pal Ipek Cav, who lent her voice to “Blue Mounds (Never Been In Love).”

“I think visually, [the video for “Blue Mounds (Never Been In Love)”] also relates to the layered pop production throughout the album. All the pink props and clothes were stuff I already had, because the color is really personally important to me, and it’s present in all the album visuals,” he adds. “My sister Allison and I shot and edited the whole video. She’s one person I really trust and work super well with. I had been wanting to make a video for a while and got kind of hung up thinking about it too seriously or thinking I needed something with higher production value, but after she and I had a lot of fun helping out with Baby!’s ‘Bite My Tongue’ video, I was feeling more inspired, like ok, we can definitely do something DIY that will still be killer!”

Get lost into Chew’s gentle electronic daydream below, and color your own reality where appropriate.

Featured Chew image by Allison Chew.