Hair, opera, Romanian popcorn & Sex Week
Styling and sitting about with (from left) Richard Orofino & Pearl Amanda Dickson of Sex Week, photographed by Alyssa Vitalino and Dillon Camp.
Searches for substance, sincerity, and sensuality amidst modern society's inescapable deluge of smog-cast skies, polluted ecosystems, broken civics, and such is a breathless search and rescue mission in the name of respite. Flooded zones of natural disasters, climate decay, executive edicts of incessant entropy, undermined states, targeted vulnerable groups, social breakdowns, and countless other calamities cause further rifts that further rip people further and further apart from each other. Shining an inviting, beguiling, brightly burning lighthouse lantern red glow amid the ever-present fogs of smoky, manufactured fear is Brooklyn duo Pearl Amanda Dickson and Richard Orofino presenting the Upper Mezzanine EP. The follow-up to last year’s self-titled EP finds the duo building upon their debut with a sound styled for the world’s loftiest stages that can make vast, expansive spaces feel secluded and intimate (and vice versa).
“Coach” cascades into the sun-kissed fray of fun that flies off the fanciful wood chip sawdust atmospheres of a core favorite festival memory. The duo makes musical movements that rock and sway with the sun waves that moves the audience into the places where seemingly infinite afternoons meet in congress with the beginnings of dusk. “Lone Wolf” wanders around the pensive perimeters of a foggy night. Sex Week makes a moody anthem that floats in hoovering meditations like wayward saltwater saturated clouds, undulating beneath moon’s maudlin, light reflecting gaze.
The midnight mode of mind keeps on creeping and crawling through the slowcore slog of “Beethoven”, slowly trudging through a mix that marries industrial minimalism with an orchestrated cacophony controlled by the cortex where the unconscious meets with the body’s assembly of senses. The sinewy sensuality carries over on “Coat” that anxiously plays upon the charged edges of tensions and desire. Rounding out Upper Mezzanine is the upbeat, harmonica inflected, rhythm strumming duet “Moneyman” that makes it rain with an optimistic outlook of possibility wrapped up into a veiled mystery of the great unknown. Punctuated by cash register dings and a summer spirited delivery — Sex Week shines like the auburn-lit hue that lights up the rustic refuges, clandestine spaces, cozy parlors, obscure saloons, fanciful flats, and other designated dwellings that provide shared senses of space, self, and a place of limitless ecstasy and radical hope.
After the jump, Sex Week’s Pearl and Richard provide exclusive behind-the-scenes insights on some of the inspirations behind Upper Mezzanine:
Sex Week’s 3 inspirations for the Upper Mezzanine EP by Pearl Amanda Dickson and Richard Orofino
Sex Week sporting salon suave hairdos; photographed by Alyssa Vitalino and Dillon Camp.
The Metropolitan Opera
We went a few times and it inspired us to name our EP, Upper Mezzanine. Lots of drama and intensity and we tried to capture that in the recordings.
Hair
Hair was very inspirational. Whether it was us buzzing our heads, or Pearl using various wigs throughout the videos. Transforming through hair.
Striking poses with Sex Week, photographed by Jason Isip.
Romanian popcorn
Songs like “Stereo Love” and “Mysterious Girl” have this sort of club accordion combo.
We wanted to incorporate that into our sound.
Sex Week’s Upper Mezzanine EP will be available August 1 via Grand Jury.
Cover art for Sex Week’s Upper Mezzanine.