Jake Nicoll is a fantastically talented, young songwriter/musician/producer who has slowly taken over the St. John's music scene over the last few years either producing the albums of or playing behind pretty much every musician in town. But it's in his own music that he shines brightest. Jake asked me last summer if I would be into making a music video for his new album he's working on, On the spot I said "of course!" and then promptly waited 5 or 6 months for him to send me some tracks to work off of. I'd pick on him each time I'd run into him asking when he's gonna gimme some mixes already? And he'd be all "soon, soon, I'm working on it!" and then I'd give him some stink eye because I'm a complete asshole. Little did I know that Jake was working on a 23 song magnum opus song cycle that spans two whole albums and is some of the richest, most deeply felt and beautifully crafted songwriting to come out of this city in a decade or more.
So I'm listening to all the tracks for a few days trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a video and I narrowed it down to about 5 songs I wanted to work on. I was thinking "well this one and this one would be the easiest, this one would be great, My Friends might be my favourite song but it's so very, very sad it might be hard to sell as a hit single". A day or two later I remembered this experimental footage I made for an abandoned project of my own 2 or 3 years ago that I've just been sitting on ever since, it never really fit any of my own songs. But then it hit me and I played the footage in one window while playing the song under it and the mood, tempo, atmosphere and subject matter of My Friends fit so, so perfectly with the footage I was totally floored. I barely had to edit it! it was fate. The final edit came together really quickly so I had a finished video for him within a week of getting the mp3s. It kinda felt like cheating (although, when I made the footage originally I spent like 6 weeks or so making it) so I'm making a second video for Jake very soon. When that'll be done I have no idea. In the meantime watch this and please do yourself a favour and buy all his albums.