Videos

SPELLLING shares new video “Revolution”

• 2nd Jul 2021

On Friday SPELLLING – the project of Bay Area-based artist Chrystia Cabral – released her new album, ‘The Turning Wheel’ via Sacred Bones. Today, she presents a new video for standout track, “Revolution.” 

The track is in step with SPELLLING’s singular sound and aesthetic, commenting on reality through fantasy and fairytale. Cabral’s magnetic voice parades over fluttering keys, eerie synth, and swelling strings. The video is a swirl of oddities – people dressed in exaggerated costumes, rich colors, and off-kilter settings. 

“The song ‘Revolution‘ is about the struggle to feel whole and to find a nirvanic place of ‘completion’ while fighting against and living day to day within a matrix of exploitation,” says Cabral. “I sing about falling complicit to the grim false narrative of ‘growing up’ becoming a body that lives to labor….as an exhaustive submission that is wearing me down… but that there is still a spark of passion… to resist and reignite. The ‘permanent revolution’ I sing about is this idea that the yearning will never die, it will only grow more powerful within us all—-for a world in which our greater virtues are encouraged and nourished—-this desire is deep within us and this desire will never die out!”

‘The Turning Wheel’ is the follow-up to 2019’s ‘Mazy Fly’, and revolves around themes of human unity, the future, divine love and the enigmatic ups and downs of being a part of this carnival called life. SPELLLING took on the ambitious task of orchestrating and self-producing an album that features an ensemble of 31 collaborating musicians. The resulting album incorporates a vast range of rich acoustic sounds that casts her work into vibrant new dimensions. 

Split into two halves, “Above” and “Below,” lush string quartet shimmer combines with haunting banjo and wandering bassoon leads, as the album progresses from the more jubilant, warm, and dreamy mood of the “Above” tracks to the more chilling tone of the “Below” tracks. This progression is anchored by SPELLLING’s vocal style that emphasizes the theatrical and folkloric heart of her songwriting.A manifestation of considerable effort, time, and collaborative energy, ‘The Turning Wheel’ will surely become a classic for its elegance. And while the artist’s eclectic influences, from soul to psych to pop to noise, remain present, something entirely new has also been born in the cosmic soup of this massive undertaking: a grand and genre-less adventure. One that allows the artist’s authenticity to shine and also marks her as a conduit for something with a magic of its own.