VIDEO PREMIERE | Michael Zapruder, "Chinese Cruiser"
The illuminated pop of Michael Zapruder; press photo courtesy of Jessica Zapruder..
The craft and concept of art is something of a tool to fight the polarity of the mortality continuum. The arts of audio and visual become a vessel to hold the unanswered questions about the universe, the energies, the ideas and the all but forgotten people's histories that transcend the material terrain of the biosphere. The creation of the aforementioned expressions (including, but obviously not limited to) through hosts of various mediums push pronouncements and parcels of the aesthetic outside the bounds of time that challenges the inertia, gravity and entropy of the finite in the pursuit of attaining an entrance — if but perchance — to beyond the gates of the infinite, timeless and eternal.
Disciple of curating post-modern pop symphonies that transcends the confounded constructs of human conundrums and more — Austin-based legend Michael Zapruder presents a mesmerizing look and listen to the video for the mesmerizing mind flow of "Chinese Cruiser" from the Howells Transmitter album Latecomers. The track moves like the train of thoughts one has while on a bike ride in a new place, where jumbling and churning percussion effects mimic the turning of gears and pedals as the lyrics survey the span of life's dreams, goals and ambitions from an outside perspective. The recitations of there you go in the chorus that encompasses the titular line of riding a Chinese Cruiser in a far away place coasts along the paths of fields, hills and meadows with a soft and sincere delivery that virtually hoovers and levitates in its arrangement. "Chinese Cruiser" dabbles in the mysteries of life and the universe in what amounts to an out-of-body experience that overlooks the the trajectories and stories of everything we have ever wanted to be in life, engaging in perspectives of being on the outside-looking in with a mystifying aesthetic that levitates with the unbearable lightness of existence.
Michael Zapruder’s “Chinese Cruiser” visual recreates an animated take on the artist's trip to Asia that inspired the song. The heavy lyrical questions of where did you want to be by now that inquires on the narratives that play out in acts across life's stage that are sung amid a lush backdrop of trees, mountains, creeks, glittering butterflies, paper airplanes and our paperclip bicycle protagonist. When the entire track changes movements into the inexplicable harmonic beauty at the two minute mark — the video switches to a bird's eye view that watches the passage of all things (butterflies, paper planes and of course our scrappy cruiser) from the perspective of sailing sweetly above everything. As the song and visual advances its ascent up into the stratosphere; we are brought as high up as we possibly can, before the questions of worldly escapism bring us back to the reality of biking along the pathways of a place that is new and foreign to our experience. "Chinese Cruiser" ingeniously shuttles for the further reaches of the galaxies, consciousness and the cosmos before ultimately returning us to the grounded terroir of our own respective unfolding timelines.
Michael Zapruder shared some reflections on the inspirations behind the single & video “Chinese Cruiser”:
In our town there’s a little mural on a pillar in an underpass — it memorializes a young guy killed by a drunk driver back in 1989.* At the bottom of the mural it says: “Fair Sailing, Tall Boy.” That phrase always opens me up and breaks my heart just a little. There’s generosity, love, and acceptance in those words — they feel simple and profound.
That same year I traveled really far away, all the way to Asia, and I rode around in that distant place on a big, heavy Chinese-made cruiser-style bike.
Later, I wrote this song, which reflects on that time and on fair sailings of all kinds and wonders what it means to travel far.
For the video, we replaced that big, faraway place with a tiny place and that heavy bike with a fragile wisp of a thing.
* Ivan Garth Johnson. FSTB.
Michael Zapruder’s album Latecomers is available now via the prestigious imprint Howells Transmitter.