Watch Albert Hammond Jr.’s Trippy ‘Born Slippy’ Video
Albert Hammond Jr.‘s video for “Born Slippy” is a rapid-fire montage of images spanning the vastness of nature and human existence. Director Justyna Hammond Jr., the musician’s wife, compiles glimpses of buzzing bees, astronauts, alarm clocks, falling rose petals and animated kissing lips into a trippy barrage complementing the song’s interlocking electric guitar lift-off. “Sometimes the sun goes behind the clouds,” Hammond Jr. sings over glistening math-rock riffs. “You forget the warmth that could be found.”
“Born Slippy” is the first single from the Strokes guitarist’s third solo LP, Momentary Masters, out July 31st via Vagrant Records. The album was inspired by poet Anne Sexton and scientist Carl Sagan, with the title referencing the latter’s influential book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which addresses the fleeting nature of human accomplishment.
“I feel like the best songs I’ve written, as soon as I was done, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I did it!’ But in that split second that it comes, that feeling goes,” Hammond Jr. said in a statement. “It’s the same thing when you find complete happiness, you find this complete low. I feel like that’s what being creative is: It’s you bouncing with emotion and what you capture in those bounces. Accept where you are and use it.”
Another inspiration was the idea of “shadows.” As he explained to Rolling Stone, the songs were born from “a few years just kind of understanding the process of having a shadow and what that means, what lies in there and what creative forces are in there, and how to – instead of just throwing that away – to incorporate it into yourself and be a whole person.”
Momentary Masters was produced by Gus Oberg, who previously worked on the Strokes’ Angles and Comedown Machine, and features a full band: guitarists Hammarsing Kharhmar and Mikey Hart, bassist Jordan Brooks and drummer Jeremy Gustin.
The 10-track LP is available to pre-order – with an instant download of “Born Slippy” – now via iTunes.