VIDEO PREMIERE | Jan Julius, "Soft Friends"
Bending the tall reeds with Jan Julius alongside (from left) Melinda Kowalska; photographed by Alec Marchant.
The most innovative artists in the world fully embrace the cycles of change that define the shifts that move our beings from a molecular level to the cellular changes of our epidermis. Take Portland, Oregon's Jan Julius who sheds their former moniker as Wolfgang Black and readies the hotly anticipated wild work of nu-utopia, non-binary brilliance on the debut album Meat Shot Idyllic via Noumenal Loom. Julius rises from the rubbles and ashes of our late capitalist quagmires that imagines a new world of inspired creative dance production that turns PC Music-esque maximalism inside out and sideways for a new synthesis that sparkles and spins like a neon glitter rainbow cast in a boiling ballroom blender. With the world still on the mend from a total lockdown and disasters too numerous and exhausting to list; Jan Julius gives us the Pride celebration we all need and crave right now with the premiere of the Nick McKernan-animated video for “Soft Friends” as we re-envision our desires, needs, wants, identities, feelings, relationship dynamics and carnality that expands the scope of gender fluid libidinal possibilities of heightened sex positive sensuality.
With celebrations this month being scaled down as we work together toward herd immunity, Jan Julius pulls out all the stops and puts on a dazzling display of multi-sexed inclusivity and utter imaginative indulgences beyond your wildest fantasies. "Soft Friends" is one of the most vibrant and vivacious immersions into a delightful mesh of bodies, possibilities, hot blooded passions that melt and meld together in an orgiastic bender of bright, hedonistic abandon. McKernan’s visual is imbued in a variety of fiery chromatic touches and tones that undulate and oscillate like a collection of curious creatures too art house, abstract, eccentric and illustrious for the Adult Swim ADHD fare. Jan Julius with the visual assist from Nick McKernan's animated interpretive adaptation builds an aesthetic space of beauty, indulgence, safety and bliss for everyone discovering themselves in what can be an otherwise oppressive and unaccepting universe. Watch as shifting figures find a bountiful sense of joy and security in one another in a world of fire, light, transfixed transformations and elements that bubble, bump and bounce to the track's beat and the illustrated on-screen action. "Soft Friends" is a work of art about our communion with one another and the need to cherish and care for each other and ourselves against the opposing orders of hate and intolerance that chooses an ecstatic love that defies the signifiers of labels, tags and conventional names. "Soft Friends" breaks the antiquated and tired conventions of gender and genre for something so delicious, indulgent and tantalizing that has never quite been experienced before. The statement and sentiment is a love, care and comfort that comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, conceptions and more that breaks the mold in a revolutionary rondo of hot liquid wax dripped dance pop designs.
Meat Shot Idyllic is music for all of today and tomorrow's LGBTQ+ clubs and clandestine venues. Jan Julius takes everything to the next level with a sophisticated prestige that has an inclusive and affectionate message that blooms beyond the restrictive and repressive binary confines. "Toni Milkus" twists up and turns out the gender conceits for something more fun and fluid, to the sexed-up beauty of the eclectic tenement "Manor Holes High Rise", the horny savage animal nitrate rhythms of "Beast Daddy", forming new frequencies and bodies with "Fetus", to coasting on the climactic mind and gender bending "Total Load". Jan Julius works throughout the album to establish an artistic palace of sanctuary for all, echoed in the earnestness of "Safety Off My Hole", acknowledging the tiers of new sensations on the introspective intricacies of "New Tears", to the posterior orifice cunnilingual caresses of "Cloaca", closing with the twinkling thought streaming dialectics of "Holes Basking in the Glow" like a chorus of illuminated yonis soaking in the vitamin D from the wet vulva kiss from the sun's rays.
Action shots with Jan Julius and Melinda Kowalska; photographed by Alec Marchant.
Jan Julius shared some thoughts on the album Meat Shot Idyllic along with the song “Soft Friends”, along with the music video animator Nick McKernan:
Jan Julius’ reflections on Meat Shot Idyllic & “Soft Friends”:
The shadow of the beast falls upon us all. Its decaying essence powers the machine that plugs us deeper into crumbling, labyrinthian towers, where we are fed only the suffering and subjugation of those beneath us. Our fathers (similarly ruled by the beast) will not and can not save us. They feast upon the creamiest suffering, while exhaling their own, faintly sour pain.
Crushed together and abandoned, we open our mouths and allow our companions to stretch into them, creating space for each other in the tightest spots. Those given more room to move swallow the feet of the people who stand above us and stamp on our faces to harvest our suffering. We open ourselves and begin to writhe and churn like larvae with those below us. We dream of the day when we will boil up and burn everything.
Meat Shop Idyllic celebrates the sweat between our bodies and the ways they shift and prickle within and beyond their confines. It celebrates the fleeting glimpses of better selves and better worlds found in all the rubbing and rutting and gnashing of teeth. From blood and fire and filth we will burst forth and fornicate in the ruins of our murderous city, bathed in the hot light of the sun.
“Soft Friends” was born from the joy of finding people I loved who fully knew and cherished me and the terror of seeing them brutalized. The desire to see queers transforming and expressing themselves fully and publicly was coupled with the fear of violent response to their existence. I wondered if allowing yourself to be seen and known is opening yourself to both love and violence, all depending on who’s around and what the state thinks (or doesn’t think) of you. That’s why we need our friends around us. Nick and I spent a long time talking about these themes and I was overjoyed when I saw how he expressed them in animation.
Summer styling with Jan Julius; photographed by Alec Marchant.
Animator Nick McKernan on “Soft Friends”:
In Jan’s song, I found an anthem in transformation. Our identities are constantly evolving, morphing into new, unknowable shapes. Candle wax became the vessel to explore this idea; a repository for every aspect of the video’s design. When hot, it can assume nearly any form; yet when it cools, it ceases to change. Like candle wax, humans are shapeshifters capable of both. From aspect ratio to character animation, it was integral to build an animation that reflected a state of constant searching. A full frame in 1920 x 1080 pixels became synonymous with a fully realized sense of identity; a destination we see glimmers through the soft friends. It became a point of catharsis.
This music video is about searching for warmth when it doesn’t come easy, and how having a few soft friends in life can make all the difference. I invite the viewer to join me in reflecting on the elements that stir inside them, seeking to break from their frames. It is the piece of us that searches tirelessly, despite adversity, to assume our fullest, warmest selves.
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Jan Julius’ debut album Meat Shot Idyllic will be available June 24 via Noumenal Loom.
Cover photo & additional photography courtesy of Alec Marchant, lettering and tape layout by Steph Linn, cover modeling by Melinda Kowalska.