It’s going to be a summer to remember, and with artists like Gilligan Moss making sun-kissed magic for the ears, we’ve already got the perfect soundtrack to our euphoric days and nights ahead.
for fans of Parcels, Jamie xx, Daft Punk, Caribou, Poolside
Stream: “Slow Down” – Gilligan Moss
As The Eagles say, “take it easy.” ‘Slow Down’ is a song of universal feeling; it’s driving 5 mph with the windows down, enjoying the crumbled Oreos at the bottom of a milkshake.
It’s going to be a summer to remember, and with artists like Gilligan Moss making sun-kissed magic for the ears, we’ve already got the perfect soundtrack to our euphoric days and nights ahead. The Brooklyn electronic duo radiate buoyant grooves and good times throughout their self-titled debut album, and nowhere do they shine quite as bright as on “Slow Down,” a special invitation to relax, let go, breathe in, and surrender to the beat.
When you’re in the back of my love
All you got to do is slow down
Ooh, you got a hunch you know now
All you got to do is slow down
When you’re in the back of my love
All you got to do is slow down
Ooh, you got a hunch you know now
All you got to do is slow down
Released this past February as the fourth single off Gilligan Moss’ self-titled debut album Gilligan Moss (out April 9 via Foreign Family Collective), “Slow Down” is a sweet and sunny hypnosis. Truth be told, it’s one of many “hypnoses” on an album that blurs the lines between pop and electronica – with dazzling injections of disco, funk, and even folk thrown in to keep things fresh and exciting. It’s a magnificent introductory record to Gilligan Moss, whose members Ben Cronin and Evan Dorfman first met years ago at preschool in Chicago, and now reside in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. Since debuting over five years ago, Gilligan Moss has toured with artist such as Glass Animals (listen to their popular “Gooey” remix here), Toro Y Moi, and Tourist, and played major festivals like Coachella and Electric Forest.
For their long-awaited debut, Cronin and Dorfman opened up the floodgates in thirteen expansive songs, each of which is its own world of sound, style, texture, and color. Some tracks, like the sunny opener “GM from GM :),” “Ultraparadiso,” and “Slow Down,” feel specially tailored to the dance-floor and anywhere that brings you peace and joie de vivre. Dive a little deeper into the album’s depths, however, and songs like the breathtakingly heartfelt “UknolknoUkno,” “Lee’s Last Dance,” and “Vibe Check” reveal the extent to which this project dares to go – in terms of scope, sound, style, and more. It’s so much more than a 50-minute DJ set; similar to the music of Parcels, Daft Punk, and Jamie xx, Gilligan Moss are as much aural sculptors as they are storytellers in their own right.
All that said, the sentiments driving “Slow Down” are perhaps more emotional than they are rooted in story. “As The Eagles say, take it easy,” Gilligan Moss tell Atwood Magazine. “‘Slow Down’ is a song of universal feeling; it’s driving 5 mph with the windows down, enjoying the crumbled Oreos at the bottom of a milkshake. We wrote this while we were decamped at GilMo HQ and if you listen closely, you can hear Merle the dog singing along too. Wash, rinse, repeat.”
Perhaps as mesmerizing as the music itself is the “Slow Down” claymation music video, directed by Francesca Morea. “Slow Down is a song about taking it easy and having a good time, so we filled the video with the people and places that make us feel that way,” the duo explain. “The director, Francesca Morea, was incredibly fun to work with and her style is so warm so it fit well with the music. It’s filled with little easter eggs and appearances by some of the Foreign Family crew. We become octopods, a version of ourselves as preschoolers, and aliens too – what more could you want?”
Francesca Morea dove deeper into the “Slow Down” experience, explaining in detail the process of bringing this song to life in a very special way:
“It obviously starts from an idea, in this case after hearing the song and understanding the meaning, and discussing with Gilligan Moss and Foreign Family, I came up with this surreal journey which you see in the final video. I created the plasticine characters and backgrounds in various materials (polystyrene, plasticine, painting) so I switched to animation, mounted the lights, created coherent shadows, placed the camera on the stand, attached the computer and started shooting.
I worked about 14 fps (frames per second) with a program called Dragonframe. Basically the process is to move (very little at a time) the character, and take a picture, move the character again and take a picture, and so on to create the defining movement. If I needed a new frame of the same scene I would start the process again and shoot from another angle. For example all the scenes with Gilligan Moss when they play, I repeated the scene framing only Ben, then only Evan, and then the wide scene with both for each set.
For the 2D scenes, like the whale or the clay writing, the difference is that I mounted the camera at the top and worked flat. For the fish in the underwater scene I put magnets to make them move in the background instead. As the animation work continued, I started editing the created scenes. By doing so I was able to develop scenes like the bark of the dog, the spoken dialogue from the characters, the barking bird, and the school bell to better match the song to the video, and in the end I did some additional editing and post production to tie it all together.”
When you’re in the back of my love
All you got to do is slow down
Ooh, you got a hunch you know now
All you got to do is slow down
When you’re in the back of my love
All you got to do is slow down
Ooh, you got a hunch you know now
All you got to do is slow down
Needless to say, “Slow Down” is an entrancing moment of zen if you’re watching, or if you’re listening.
With the sun hanging higher and shining ever-brighter and bolder in the sky as the last of 2021’s winter thaws, now is the time to start cataloging the songs we want to blast outside – both to ourselves in our headphones, and to a (safely-executed) party of friends. Whether you’re tuning in to tune out, or to indulge in something unique and new, Gilligan Moss are here to elevate and amplify our journeys. Their debut album is sure to enchant the mind and spark the imagination, and “Slow Down” is the perfect way to kick off the feel-good vibes of summer ’21.
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Stream: “Slow Down” – Gilligan Moss
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