New York band Palberta violently finger-paints outside of a melodic canvas, so when you're listening it almost feels like their music is bleeding out onto the carpet and walls. The band's work is emerging at an apt moment in time, with their stark originality contrasting the current trends of appropriation in popular music. The band is made up of Lily Konigsberg, Anina Ivry-Block, and Nina Ryser, who all met during their time at Bard College. It's hard to determine what kind of emotion exists at the core of Palberta's work, which includes invoking the likes of Yoko Ono through screams, shrills, and onomatopoeic noise. Perhaps it is a sort of ecstasy, a celebration of life. Or it could very well be a celebration of death. Or both, because a true celebration of life includes death.
In their new video for "Filling Empty/Jaws," premiering on The FADER today, Palberta documents a sinister journey. The video was made by the band's friend Adinah Dancyger, and they teased the story behind it over email: "The masked creature comes to our show at Shea Stadium and by unexplainable circumstances winds up in another land..."
So sit back, relax, and take a trip through a surrealist downtown fever dream.