Ian David Green time travels back to the plains of Alamogordo in the video for ‘White Sand/Black Star’. Vintage footage from nuclear tests in New Mexico creates a nostalgic vibe as the tale of the birth of the atomic bomb unfolds in the lyrics. B3 organ and tambourine drive home the choruses as the rest of the track floats by in a lush dream. Horns reminiscent of The Band pad gently behind the vocal.
Reflecting on the song Green says, “I was inspired to write White Sand/Black Star after stumbling upon an entry in Wikipedia all about the atomic bomb testing at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico in 1945. I imagined a character working on the project but feeling disillusioned with what was happening and wanting to escape and build a different life with his wife. It speaks more generally to the experience of losing innocence & faith on account of experience and the desire to change one’s direction when the course we are on no longer appeals to us the way it once did.”
The song was recorded and mixed by Marty Hailey at Metro13 Music in Edinburgh, and mastered by Grammy award-winning engineer William Bowden in Australia. Green plays acoustic and tremolo guitar, with Marty Hailey on drums and bass, and the brass was played by Edinburgh-based musician Marcus Britton.
The nostalgic yet unsettling images in the video were chosen by Green himself, “I put the video together in Premiere Pro over the course of several weeks using stock footage, some from the 40s and 50s (including the original bomb-test footage) and some from much later but treated to look like early film. I like the mood of it and the juxtaposition of the banal and the comfortable (swimming pools, apple pies, church sermons) and the destructive mechanisation that was happening at exactly the same time.”
‘White Sand/Black Star’ has been independently released and is available on Spotify and YouTube.
