“Terminus” music video / short film
See the unreleased video here:
ABOUT THE BAND:
Funkrust Brass Band is a 20-piece post-apocalyptic disco-punk brass band playing all original music with megaphone vocals, heavy tuba bass lines, thundering percussion and searing brass melodies. Their explosive live performances feature full band choreography, signature wasteland/glam uniforms and LED lighting effects. The band mixes post-punk, disco, EDM, metal, and funk with Balkan brass and New Orleans second line sounds, and filters that through the medium of a massive street brass band with a punk rock sensibility.
ABOUT THE VIDEO:
This December, Funkrust Brass Band is releasing the music video “Terminus,” an ambitious narrative short film that tells the fantastical story of a (brass) band of weary survivors of an unnamed apocalypse as they follow mysterious sigils that they hope will lead them to an oasis in the wasteland. Instead, they find themselves drawn into a secret magical lair, where they’re compelled to perform for a trapped Jinnee (played by Funkrust cymbalist and actress Monica Hunken), and only the mysterious Prophetess (played by Funkrust lead singer Ellia Bisker) can rescue them all.
The story was developed by bandleader Phil Andrews, director Iain Marcks, and band saxophonist Cassandra Burrows. Once the project launched, the team recruited award-winning cinematographer Jendra Jarnagin, production designer Sam Wilson (Bread and Puppet), and renowned mask-maker Darrell Thorne. As word spread of the unique nature of the project, particularly its use of analog film stock and practical effects, many other noted film and television professionals joined the crew. After several months of preparation, principal photography for the project commenced for three days in mid-August of 2019. The film features 21 band members, five locations, two professional dancers.
The locations feature some of New York’s most notorious hidden places: the Farm Colony, an abandoned geriatric hospital complex closely tied to the Cropsey urban legend come to life; Richmond Parkway, an unconnected one mile stretch of overgrown highway built by Robert Moses and stopped by community activists; a stretch of disused LIRR tracks in Forest Park, Queens; and the legendary Brooklyn underground art event space Rubulad.
Technical Notes / Credits:
1.85:1
Shot on Kodak 7219 500T (Super 16)
Zeiss Ultra 16mm prime lenses
Digital intermediate
Directed and edited by: Iain Marcks
Written by: Phil Andrews, Iain Marcks, Cassandra Burrows
Produced by: Iain Marcks, Phil Andrews, Cassandra Burrows, Jendra Jarnagin
Director of photography: Jendra Jarnagin
Production designer: Sam Wilson
Special costumes by: Darrell Thorne
Movement coordinator: Billy Schultz
Colorist: Kevin Krout at Harbor Picture Co.
MUSICAL INFLUENCES:
Gang of Four, David Bowie, Prince, Talking Heads, What Cheer? Brigade, !!!, Rebirth Brass Band; as well as genres like New Orleans second line, Balkan brass music, EDM, metal, hardcore, punk, funk and disco
VIDEO INFLUENCES:
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979), Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946)
The BONES AND BURNING project:
This fall, the band released Bones and Burning, a series of recordings and videos on a variety of analog and archaic formats, in line with its post-technological concept. The band recorded live to 8-track tape at The Dreamfield, an analog studio run by Michael Kammers, bandleader of the MK Groove Orchestra.
Two of these songs, "Terminus" and "Open House Fire," will be released as a limited edition color 7" vinyl single.
Funkrust will also release music videos for three of these songs, each featuring a different archaic format. In addition to Terminus, WLND Brooklyn Public Access Internet will produce a video for "Open House Fire" using their VHS/green-screen treatment, and stop motion animator Stefan Zeniuk created a piece for the song "Uncanny Carnival," which was released in October.
The 7” vinyl single and 4-song digital EP was released on November 8 in conjunction with an album release show at the Footlight Bar in Ridgewood, Queens. The digital tracks are available on most streaming platforms and the vinyl and other associated merchandise is available exclusively on Bandcamp.
FOUNDER/BAND BIO:
The band was co-founded in 2014 by brass band scene veteran Phil Andrews and singer-songwriter Ellia Bisker. The real-life couple collaborates on each song, with Andrews composing the music and Bisker contributing lyrics. His past art and musical projects include the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Apocalypse Five & Dime, Gay Panic and the Miss Rockaway Armada and he currently plays bass with the art-rock outfit Trouble with Kittens. Bisker become known on the NYC singer-songwriter scene with her band Sweet Soubrette, and is currently one-half of the popular goth-folk duo Charming Disaster.
The project was conceived as a brass band from a future dystopia, dedicated to bringing hope to the survivors: in this post-apocalyptic world, the only bands left are those that can play without electricity or sound equipment. The music of the apocalypse isn’t death metal—it’s brass. Each of the songs addresses that audience in a different way-- from the examination of loss and despair to the collective catharsis of high energy dance music.
The band formed in 2014, and since then has played a wide variety of venues, festivals and events throughout NYC and the East Coast. Some notable examples include appearances at the underground art party series Rubulad, immersive events at the McKittrick Hotel (home of the wildly popular Sleep No More), cultural institutions like the New York Botanical Garden, the huge EDM festival Mysteryland in Woodstock, NY, the annual Sinterklaas festival in Rhinebeck, NY, opening for World Inferno Friendship Society at the Mercury Lounge and the HONK brass band festivals in NYC, Providence, RI, and Austin, TX. Funkrust’s debut album, Dark City, was released in 2017, and the band will roll out an ambitious song and video cycle entitled Bones and Burning in the fall of 2019.
PRESS
"One of New York’s most explosive live bands. They march in various formations, wear illuminated costumes, climb on anything that looks like it could support them… and write catchy songs that draw from styles as diverse as Serbian dances, New Orleans second-line marches and punk funk."
- New York Music Daily review of Bones and Burning
"It’s an upbeat album that is easy to sing along to, but more importantly it’s easy to dance to. The biggest problem the record has for the listener is that it makes it impossible to not want to catch Funkrust live and in person right away."
- rBeatz review of Dark City
"Prior to hitting play limber up your hips, knees and most importantly ankles as Funkrust Brass Band take the listener on a journey that demands much of the lower joints in a roughly twenty five minute, seven track, release of unrelenting strutting dance."
- Emerging Indie Bands preview of Dark City
“The title track, and most distinctively chromatic, Balkan-flavored anthem from the debut album by New York’s largest and most explosive brass band.”
- New York Music Daily, naming “Dark City” one of the year’s 100 best songs