Video Premiere: Notel – “Where There’s Smoke”

Drawing influence from 70s film scores and abstract art, one of Portland’s newest acts, Notel, creates an experimental, cinematic sound that calls to mind the likes of avant-garde composers David Axelrod and Alice Coltrane. Although the group is new, it’s members—Emily Kingan (Lovers, The haggard) on drums, Lorna Krier (Lorna Dune,Philip Glass Ensemble, Terry Riley) on synths, Peter Condra (Magic Mouth) and Becky Miller (EMA, Top Parts) on Guitars—are no strangers to the scene.

As they work towards a debut release, Notel are putting out one single at a time. Today Eleven is pleased to premiere the abstract animation video for the band’s second single “Where There’s Smoke”. The track boasts myriad dynamic shifts, from eerie minimalist droning, to almost pop-like harmonized guitar syncopation, into a frenzied kraut-tinged chaos. Evoking the feeling of a bad acid trip on the Fourth of July, the accompanying video created by Chilean artist Juan Saez cycles through blurred and distorted rolling images before exploding into red, white and blue flashes of schizophrenic scribblings and kaleidoscopic swirls of stars, ending with a pixelated American flag waving beneath a fiery orange.