DUDES – “C.O.S.M.I.C.” (Official Video)
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San Diego’s weirdo pop band, DUDES, have successfully made a name for themselves within the internet DIY community, reeling people in with their wild eccentricity and goofy sense of humor. Last summer, they released a 7-track EP called Narcissist Anonymous via Grizzly Records, and this year front man, Ryan Solomon, dropped a free DUDES mixtape called #RARE, which features an eclectic combination of old songs, new songs, and unfinished sketches that were never fully fleshed out.
“C.O.S.M.I.C” is one of the newer cuts off of the #RARE mixtape and for the past few months, the DUDES crew and friends (KYNAN, TV Girl) have been cooking up a special green screen style video to accompany it.
Ryan was kind enough to give me a few words about the video & the beginnings of DUDES. Along with those words, we’ve got a very special audio recording…
Listen, read, and watch below:
Ryan Solomon of DUDES — Special video commentary
When DUDES started a little more than a year ago, I was completely obsessed with youtube. I was finding out about a lot of new music, but I was also finding gems from projects that I was already a fan of: interviews, live footage, unreleased tracks, etc. It deepened my appreciation for music, the internet, and sharing in general.
My original plan was to only release DUDES music on youtube, encouraging people to experience our visuals (even if they were poorly put together), and to tempt people with further discovery by watching another video. I started out by making simple, found footage videos for our first few songs, such as “Why Would I?“.
EJ (DUDES guitarist, Grizzly Records), had a lot of experience with shooting and editing video, so we decided to take our ideas to the next level with the “Happy Halloween” video. Sooner or later the idea of working with a green screen came up, so I went to the fabric store down the street and bought their entire stock of neon green. EJ took charge of learning how to edit with the green screen, and would hang it up at random times when we were hanging out or jamming.
After learning from a bit of experimentation, we finally felt ready to make a full video that emphasized the green screen. I wanted to incorporate a bit of dancing and figured we could do some cool tricks with the green screen. From there we wanted to make sure we kept it in space, but also explore the concept of a magical boombox that transforms an ordinary garage into a cosmic wonderland. We started shooting, but realized it was a lot harder than we thought to fill the whole video with creative ideas. Still, we just kept working, and tried to make the video as fun and personalized as possible.
