Bird Honesty - Out 7/29
-
The Song
Out 7/29, “Bird Honesty” is the new instrumental track from Lanier Sammons released along with an animated video by Timothy David Orme.
The track is a guitar-based piece with dramatic percussion and haunting production. It's a fusion of performance and studio approaches with a lush, melancholy sound that highlights Sammons’ musical identities as a guitarist and as an engineer. As guitarist, Sammons has performed across a wide range of genres from experimental new music (with Larry Polansky, Giacomo Fiore, and others), Southeast Asian surf and garage rock (Dzian!), pop rock (Seven Bridges), and Afro-pop (SadzaMoto). He works equally broadly as a producer and engineer spanning genres and roles and teaching music technology at the university-level. “Bird Honesty” was composed, performed, and engineered by Sammons out of his home studio in Monterey, CA. -
The Video
Directed by Timothy David Orme with digital painting by Jennifer Benge, the animated video draws the viewer into a rich, vivid natural world in the midst of a mysterious and fantastical event. After the camera zooms in over the ocean, flickering lights float down above unsure animals, who begin to flee. Eventually, the flickering force overcomes them, and they fall before ascending into the sky.
Sammons and Orme are both professors at California State University, Monterey Bay, and this video marks a fourth collaboration for them. Orme’s music video for Sammons’s song “secant” is available now and screening at film festivals. Sammons also provided score and sound design work on Orme’s award-winning films Drawing the Perfect Brain and fulcrum. This marks their first collaboration with Benge, who is a staff member at CSU Monterey Bay.
The Creators
Lanier Sammons
Lanier Sammons composes for film and for the concert hall in addition to writing songs, and he has engineered and/or produced for a wide range of artists (Giacomo Fiore, Bitter Party, Post-Haste Reed Duo).
As a performer, he got his start as lead guitarist for Seven Bridges in his home town of Macon, Georgia before playing with bands in New York. Relocating to Charlottesville, Virginia to pursue a Ph.D. in composition, Lanier joined Dzian!, playing Southeast Asian surf and garage rock. Another move to Santa Cruz and then Monterey in California found him as a member of the Zimbabwean marimba ensemble Sadza and their Afro-pop incarnation SadzaMoto.
Lanier teaches as an Associate Professor of Recording & Technology at California State University, Monterey Bay.
Timothy David Orme
Timothy David Orme is a writer, filmmaker, and animator. His short films and animations spanning nearly every genre (experimental, narrative, music video, and documentary) have been shown at film festivals and art venues all over the world, including European Media Arts Fest, Jihalva International Documentary Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Philadelphia Film and Animation Festival, Raindance, and the National Gallery of Art among others. His film most recent film, fulcrum was a juried film at the 2022 Thomas Edison Film Festival, and won best animation at the 2022 Dam Short Film Festival and the Arizona International Film Festival.
