OK Go returns with And the Adjacent Possible, the band’s ambitious fifth studio album and first full-length release since 2014’s Hungry Ghosts. Even for a band known for pushing boundaries, the album is wildly eclectic—postmodern and genre-dissolving, with nods to Phil Spector, Toni Visconti, and Nile Rodgers sandwiched between the fuzzy, psychedelic opener, ‘Impulse Purchase,’ and the meditative, Zen-like closer, ‘Don’t Give Up Now.’ Glued together by the distinctive mixing of the band’s longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon, Tame Impala, MGMT), the twelve tracks collectively paint a portrait of a band comfortable in its own chameleon skin.
Listen to And the Adjacent Possible, released via Paracadute here: https://sym.ffm.to/andtheadjacentpossible
The band will deliver an extra special performance of ‘Love,’ its new single, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, April 15. Like the album’s first track ‘A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,’ ‘Love’ is written from a father’s perspective, but the weighty concerns of the first song give way to wonder and joy on this soaring new anthem.
Damian Kulash says, “You know that dream where you’re somewhere familiar, maybe your childhood home, but there’s a door, one that was never there before, leading to some impossible magical place? Having children did that to my understanding of love. Suddenly, a huge new ballroom opened up off of the little apartment I’ve inhabited so long: a whole new wing of love, grand and soaring and utterly overwhelming. It is endlessly amazing that we exist — little, conscious clusters of stardust occurring, apparently by chance, in the vast emptiness of the universe. And we get to experience love. It is unbelievable.”
And since this is OK Go, of course there is a mind-melting music video. It always seems like the band can’t possibly top themselves, but with today’s release of the video for ‘Love,’ they’ve done it again. The single-take video features complex choreography between the band, 29 robots, and upwards of 60 mirrors to create a dazzling — and this time deeply moving — spectacle of infinite reflections and human-scale kaleidoscopes. Shot in the faded glory of a Budapest train station, the clip was concepted in partnership with creative agency SpecialGuest, co-directed by Damian Kulash, Aaron Duffy, and Miguel Espada, and produced by 1stAveMachine, with technology integration by SpecialGuestX.
Always looking for new ways to document their elaborate videos, OK Go’s Damian Kulash, Timothy Nordwind, Andy Ross, and Dan Konopka wore Ray-Ban Meta glasses throughout the production to capture behind-the-scenes footage – watch HERE. Learn more about the Universal Robots in the video HERE. For a more in-depth behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the video courtesy of Project Management Institute – please view HERE.
“We’re always drawn to spectacle and wonder,” says Kulash, “and the goal, this time, was to take them somewhere more heartfelt and emotional than we have before. This song is so personal for me, and the infinite reflections bouncing between two mirrors are a perfect metaphor for the kind of overwhelming, reality-shifting love that I’m singing about. Two simple things come together, and new dimensions burst from them into existence. Magic unfurls endlessly. It’s the impossible, right there before you. That’s the kind of wonder that can bring me to tears.”
Combined views of OK Go’s previous video, the stunning moving mosaic for ‘A Stone Only Rolls Downhill’ that features 64 videos playing across 64 phones, has already surpassed five million. Directed by Kulash and Chris Buongiorno (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew), it required more than a thousand takes, and over two hours and twenty minutes of single-take clips which are condensed into the final frame. Filmmaking magazine Shots marveled, “Whenever a new OK Go video drops, the creative community’s mixture of anticipation and professional jealousy is palpable.”
The album packaging also demonstrates boundless creativity and meticulous attention to detail. The first vinyl pressing, limited to 3,000, is a two-LP set on 180-gram, 45RPM discs in a foil-stamped gatefold with full-color inner sleeves. A 3-dimensional sculpture pops up when listeners open it. The packaging was designed by Yuri Suzuki and Claudio Ripol from Team Suzuki with 3D sliceform design and popup structure by Wombi Rose, Hà Trịnh Quốc Bảo, and Emilio LaTorre for Lovepop.
To listen to And the Adjacent Possible is to be taken on an emotional rollercoaster… in the best way possible. While the music is largely upbeat, the lyrics can be dark. OK Go’s sardonic wit drives ‘Impulse Purchase,’ a playfully direct address to the algorithms that will choose its audience: “Now, as a practical matter it’s pointless/to address you directly here/Any probabilistic adjustments/will dissolve in the sea/of the everything-everyone-everywhere-ever-has-done that you swallowed before.” Even the brightly titled ‘A Good, Good Day at Last’ features lines like, “Anger, she’s more loyal/than her fickle sister Hope.” Yet rays of hope (“Love,” “Don’t Give Up Now”) also abound.
Track Listing – And the Adjacent Possible
- Impulse Purchase
- A Stone Only Rolls Downhill
- Love
- A Good, Good Day at Last
- Fantasy Vs. Fantasy
- This Is How It Ends
- Take Me with You
- Better Than This
- Golden Devils
- Once More with Feeling
- Going Home
- Don’t Give Up Now
About OK Go
Since their inception OK Go has been something more than a band and something different from an art project. With a career that includes award-winning videos, New York Times op-eds, collaborations with pioneering dance companies, tech giants, NASA, animators and Muppets, and an experiment that encoded their music on actual strands of DNA, OK Go continue to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved. Formed as a quartet in Chicago in 1998 and relocated to Los Angeles three years later, OK Go (Damian Kulash, Timothy Nordwind, Dan Konopka, Andy Ross) have spent their career in a steady state of transformation and continue to add to a curriculum vitae filled with experimentation in a variety of mediums. OK Go’s work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, and their achievements have been recognized with twenty-one Cannes Lions, twelve CLIOs, three VMAs, two Webbys, The Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and a Grammy. The band has also partnered with the Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas to create OK Go Sandbox, an educational non-profit that provides free resources to teachers that use OK Go’s videos as starting points to teach STEAM concepts.
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