BEN WOODS SHARES 'DISPELLER' SHORT FILM

Ben Woods has shared his short film; Dispeller - which premiered via The FADER earlier this week - ahead of his forthcoming record of the same name which arrives this Friday the 15th of July via Melted Ice Cream (NZ).

The short, directed by filmmaker Martin Sagadin (Aldous Harding, Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams), features Woods performing three songs from the record with a circulating cast of artists from Aotearoa at The Sitting Room, which is where the album was made. The footage is blended with homemade demos and chopped homemade footage from his hometown in Ōtautahi.

"Part of making this record for me was experimenting with and understanding space. With recording, it was the studio versus where I felt the songs wanted to transport the listener. And through writing, it looked at the natural projection of where I was geographically and the people I was making music with or whose music I loved.

Making this short with Martin— who's directed most of my videos and knows me inside out— was how I wanted to share that less abstractly. Piecing the songs with my friends in the spaces where I made the album. Not to paint a portrait of myself, but of all those external forces that built me." - Ben Woods.

"Aside from a mic’d up tape machine that delivers some delicious static on Dispeller‘s lead single, "Hovering At Home", the band plays conventional rock instruments, with Woods shifting between rhythmic electric strumming and inspired acoustic fingerpicking. “Hovering” sits sandwiched between two new tracks, “White Leather Again” and “Fame,” the first of which is a slow-burning sketch of a call and response that sounds somehow both ethereal and anthemic while the video’s finale is a warped, drifting vocal duet set to a single shimmering synth. Interspersed between these songs are eerie instrumental interludes that play behind blurry B-roll of Woods’ wanderings, making the whole affair feel like a long, lovely dream."
- The FADER

Watch Dispellar below.