Blinker The Star deliver a crash course in intergalactic love with the video for their latest single Terror Of The Heart — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
The latest preview of Blinker’s upcoming latest album Juvenile Universe, Terror Of The Heart offers a chiming, charming hit of retro-fuelled space-pop, augmented by a kitschy-cool clip featuring bandleader Jordon Zadorozny as an astronaut who falls in love after falling to Earth.
“Terror Of The Heart was the final song written for the new album and is a co-write with my good friend Bob Wilcox,” explains Zadorozny, the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer behind Blinker The Star. “I had the line, “terror of the heart” in the second verse and Bob decided that it should be the title and main hook in the chorus, which, of course, I never would have thought of doing myself. Musically, I was inspired by Trevor Rabin’s shimmering guitar and production work on Yes’s 90125, but filtered through a slightly more gothy pop vibe.”
“The video is the work of director Rémi Frechette and producer/art director Emmanuelle Boies. Emmanuelle felt an immediate connection to the song and quickly was able to visualize the world and imagery that the video inhabits,” says Zadorozny. Frechette adds: “The video is about that moment when you think you are comfortable in your life, but you see a window to another dimension where you made different choices that may have led you somewhere else. It was inspired by the aesthetic of 1950s futurism, mixed with VHS textures and some in-your-face green screen effects from the early ’90s.”
Recorded at Zadorozny’s Skylark Park Studio in Pembroke, Ont., sessions for Juvenile Universe began before last year’s Careful With Your Magic album was even released, he says. “I operate mainly as a one-person band in the studio at this point, bringing in friends to add colour and texture on certain tracks, but for the most part I start and end things alone. My residence is also my recording studio, so when in-person recording jobs began to fall off last spring, there wasn’t much stopping me from finishing this new batch of songs off fairly quickly.”
Juvenile Universe starts heavy and ends wistful, he says, with ornamental contributions from The Posies’ Ken Stringfellow, Tool and Ministry’s Paul D’Amour, longtime collaborators Bob Wilcox and Filippo Gaetani, Sloan’s Gregory Macdonald and others finding their way into the mix. “Because the scent of my last album was still fresh in the air, I had been thinking of this album as sort of a continuation of the last one, but when I played it for friends, they all thought it was definitely a step forward. So I’m not sure if it’s the beginning or the end of something.”
Watch Terror Of The Heart above, hear more from Juvenile Universe below, and follow Blinker The Star on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
