Interview: Boston Rock Band Major Moment Discuss Their New Music Video "The Flood"
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“...when people hear our band’s name we want them to think about what’s important to them, but also to remember various major moments in history. Whether our moment in history will truly become a major one is yet to be seen, but we’re certainly willing to work for it.”
Congratulations on the completion and release of the music video for "The Flood". Regarding the song itself, what was the band's creative process for its development?
Thank you! The story behind the song development is definitely pretty interesting, kind of unique, because the song started from the band actually falling apart, or to be specific, 4 out of 6 then members quitting Major Moment on the same day, leaving myself [Andrey] and Sasha as the only standing members. Not your average band’s creative process, haha.
So the original theme behind the song was our personal disappointment with the people we trusted and thought we’re on the same page with, and then as we kept writing the meaning became more broad and universal, because all of us at some point have felt this disappointment of being betrayed - by the people in power, by the government, or just in our daily lives when we see people disrespect and mistreat each other, not caring about what’s left after they’re gone. That became the main theme behind the song, reinforced by the French proverb - “Après nous le déluge” (After us, the flood).
The two of us wrote the song, the lyrics, I produced and arranged our home demo, and then we took it to the studio where Kevin [Billingslea, producer] helped us to get the song to where it is today.
Salute to the music video's director, Tyler Ayers. How did you and Tyler come up with the treatment for the visual and was there a collective sigh of relief when the filming ended?
We worked with Tyler and Revelry Studios on our previous music video for “May Leave Scars” and it felt like the right partnership, so we started planning “The Flood” literally two weeks after we were done with “May Leave Scars”. We’re proud to take the credit for coming up with the concept for the music video ourselves, and when we presented it to Tyler he called it “genius”.
Not sure where exactly this idea came from, but we’ve probably watched too much MTV back in late 90s - early 2000s, so we got subconsciously inspired by the era that brought us some of the most visually stunning plot-based music videos. We definitely wanted to keep it as far as possible from the beaten “rock band plays in the warehouse” concept.
We had our fair share of concerns about how we were possibly going to pull off flooding the room, especially on our rather tight (by the industry standards) budget, but Tyler was up for a challenge and said we have to do it and we’ll figure it out. So we started preparing for it: picking props, costumes, looking for friends who would fit the roles, developing scenes, etc. Meanwhile, Tyler was busy building the room… in his backyard.
A few months of preparation for only about 10 hours of filming that was done overnight, and the time went by crazy-fast! No wonder that after the filming was done, there was a collective sigh of relief! However, the work was done for everyone but us and Tyler, haha. It then took us over 2 months to edit the video the way it made sense with our original vision in mind. Very happy with the result though, it was all worth it!
Is "The Flood" a part of an upcoming EP or album? If so, what can you tell us about the project?
It’s definitely a part of something bigger than just a single, haha. The music industry and listeners’ consumption habits have kind of shifted towards short form content, so being an independent artist we’ll probably be working on a single basis for a while, trying to further grow our audience with each subsequent release. With “The Flood” we have something different in mind though, and it’s not something we’ve originally planned, but we think it’s going to be an interesting move. If everything goes well, we’ll be releasing “The Flood: Remixed & Reimagined” sometime early next year.
It’s not an album, not it’s an EP. It’s like a single on steroids. We already have 6-7 different versions and remixes of the song, and they’re all cool and unique. If you’re a fan of the song, you’ll totally find something enjoyable there. Our favorites so far are the 8-bit retro version and the latest version we’ve just recorded in the studio yesterday - fully in Russian.
Being of Russian descent, we would often get asked when we are going to record something in Russian, but we love writing in English, and find it a much more music-friendly language. So frankly, as weird as it sounds, we didn’t see this one coming. Myself & Sasha took it as a challenge to rewrite the lyrics to our mother tongue so meticulously that not only the Russian version preserves the meaning behind the song and rhymes well, but even the amount of syllables is kept exactly the same to not interrupt the flow of the vocal melody.
We realize it probably means nothing to anyone but our Russian-speaking fans (which we do have quite a few), yet we’re super-proud of what we were able to do with it. It’s like working with a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle, once you manage to get it together, you feel good about it. There are more surprises, but let’s not give them all away.
What would you say has been the greatest accomplishment for Major Moment thus far as a band?
We did get quite a few notable awards for our work in the past, good press coverage, but honestly every new day that we spend doing what we love feels like an accomplishment in itself. If I had to name one other thing - it would be the music video for “The Flood”. We worked so hard on it for so long, and to have your crazy vision finally come to life is truly satisfying.
How did the six members come together to form the band, and what does the name Major Moment represent?
Keeping in mind that we’re a 6-piece band only in theory now, lol… Major Moment represents the strength and the perseverance, the importance of appreciating every moment we spend on this planet with people we care about. Every band or a business had their make or break moment, and it feels good to know that Major Moment survived quite a few of those and only grew stronger from it. Aside from that, when people hear our band’s name we want them to think about what’s important to them, but also to remember various major moments in history. Whether our moment in history will truly become a major one is yet to be seen, but we’re certainly willing to work for it.
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