Teasing the release of this fall’s album, EGO, Middle Class Fashion is premiering a new video from that album, “Hot.” The video was shot in early June by Chad Eivins of Foveal Media (operated with partners Bryan Dematteis and Anna Minx), which concentrates on music video and documentary video projects. You can skip to the end of the piece to see the work, or you can read on for a bit of backstory on its summertime creation.
Meeting last week at MoKaBe’s for iced coffees and conversation about the track and its resultant video, MCF's Jenn Malzone and Eivins were all smiles, frequently finishing answers for another and, in doing so, giving voice to their belief that the effort was very collaborative. It started out with a series of a texts from Malzone, featuring some short, evocative words: “summertime,” “orange,” “flirty, but with something off.”
Eivins recalls getting early versions of the song, which he’d play on his daily dog walk, often repeating “Hot” on his earphones for an hour at a time, in order to immerse himself the song’s mood and feel. As the projected shooting day moved from April to June, he felt completely in-sync with the track by the time it was time to shoot, and a short night of live action production was all it took to capture the main visuals.
“I think it was in springtime that I had a rough version of the song,” Eivins recalls. “She’d mentioned the beach and the song did have this constant, ocean wave-feel. I was understanding that liquid part of it, and I started bringing more and more water concepts to it. We riffed on some ideas and she kep saying ‘We need orange,’ so we talked colors. While the schedule didn’t work out until June, I kept getting time to process this in my head. It’s very catchy, a great song and I’m still not burned out on it.”
“I don’t make videos,” Malzone says. “It’s not what I’m good at. And it’s what he’s great at, so I’m happy and find value in working with people who are good at things I’m not. Honestly, it was an easy process.”
Extremely skilled in video and lighting projections for live events, under the moniker of Chizmo.tv, Eivins says that all of the action shot in the video was done live and in-camera.
“The colorful backdrops are coming from live projections,” he notes. “All of it was shot to camera and that made it very easy to cut together.”
The album from which it’s coming, EGO, seems to be a fluid work of its own, with band members mixing and matching their live instruments for the recording sessions; some of those are still underway. Malzone says that even on the night prior to the interview, she was “recording some acoustic piano, just for echoing.” She admits that she’s “really proud of it” as a long-player and that even the video version of the cut “Hot” could vary mildly by the time the album’s ready for official release.
As it stands, the song sounds (and looks) just like this:
And do check out the videos that have already been making the rounds, "Turquoise Heart," and "Cold Blooded Rock 'n' Roll":
