Here's the skinny on 2001. We're not talking about the year (which was a great year for indie rock, FYI), but rather the musical duo made up of Joan Wasser (Joan As Police Woman) and Benjamin Lazar Davis. In recent times both Brooklyn based artists ventured to Africa separately—Wasser with Damon Albarn's Africa Express and Davis to study traditional West African music—and they returned reinvigorated and captivated by the music of the Ba-Benzele Pygmy people from the Central African Republic. These hypnotic musical patterns and rhythms are traceable in their music as 2001.Above is the premiere of their lastest video for "Broke Me in Two" a warmly wrought, elastic pop song full of unexpected lilts and glitchy repetitions and just a pinch of R&B. It's a love song too and the second part to the video for "Overloaded" which also stars Fred Armisen in a boilersuit. Armisen returns here, in the same car mechanic get-up, not to mention Wasser cruising all casual in a Bentley with her gold bamboo earrings, swinging in the breeze, Davis flossing by her side."'Broke Me in Two' was written across the Atlantic Ocean," explains Wasser. "From Brooklyn, Ben sent me a track with the bit-crushed Pygmy ostinato and upright piano and I wrote the melody and lyrics in Amsterdam while on tour. It was one of those songs that seemed to write itself. Fred Armisen, a former band mate of mine, was kind enough to play our melancholic car mechanic in this video where we drive around in a ridiculous white Bentley among other things."Check it out below.
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