Previous Industries, the brainchild of long-time collaborators Open Mike Eagle, Still Rift and Video Dave announce their forthcoming album Service Merchandise. Due June 28 via Merge Records, the newly formed collective shares the second taste of their debut album with their new single and music video ‘Pliers’, directed by X.
Speaking on ‘Pliers’, the album’s forerunning single, Open Mike Eagle shares: “This is a song about tension, pressure and using our tools. It’s about the pressure of being middle-aged in rap, the pressure of sharing oneself in relationships and a high stack of yesterdays about to topple into tomorrow. It’s the sound of the fight to take a deep breath.“
The video is a shot-for-shot remake of the ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’ scene from Steven Spielberg’s classic thriller Jaws. It features Previous Industries in live action captured on green screen by Ryan Calavano. We find our heroes STILL RIFT, Open Mike Eagle, and Video Dave on a small boat, under attack from an unseen threat, springing into action, and fighting for their lives. It all takes place in a beautiful, layered cartoon world created by Emmy award-winning animator Crankbunny. All props handled in the video were meticulously wrapped in felt in Dave’s signature style of textile articulation.
The songs on this record are titled after long-gone retail chains, and the verses are woven with references to a world either left abandoned, or bulldozed to be replaced by an Amazon Fresh location. They draw parallels between the ghosts of chain store culture and the disposability of contemporary rap music: both beset with the consequences of the bottomless appetite of consumerism. Previous Industries are here to prove that just because something falls out of favour, it doesn’t mean its value is lost.
Open Mike Eagle needs no introduction. A legendary emcee, comedian, and podcaster, Open Mike Eagle coined the term “art rap” to describe his whip-smart, literate style of hip-hop, which draws inspiration from Freestyle Fellowship and De La Soul as well as They Might Be Giants and Pavement. While he has ten albums to his name, a few of the many critically acclaimed highlights are Brick Body Kids Still Daydream (2017), Anime, Trauma and Divorce (2020), and Component System with the Auto Reverse (2022). All the while, he has become a respected figure in the comedy world, co-hosting several podcasts as well as the Comedy Central series The New Negroes.
Video Dave first met Mike on the campus grounds of Southern Illinois University, where an innate creative bond was formed alongside other notable figures Hannibal Buress and Serengeti. For the uninitiated, Video Dave is a Chicago-bred rapper, TV producer, beatmaker, and writer who notably worked with Open Mike Eagle on The New Negroes where Dave was a musical guest with both Mike and Method Man as well as working on the production of the show. In 2023, he released ArticulatedTexTiles, which includes features from OME and STILL RIFT. That album earned a slew of critical praise including being named one of July’s best hip-hop albums by Bandcamp. A true multi-hyphenate artist, he has had a creative hand in seemingly disparate corners of modern-day culture—from sewing to reality TV shows, to Prince performing at the Super Bowl, somehow Dave has a connection.
Enter STILL RIFT, a high school friend of Mike’s whom he has lovingly described as “a mystery wrapped in an enigma.” While he has not released his own music, he has made numerous appearances turning out memorable features on others’ projects. He was most recently featured on OME’s 2023 album Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering, as was Video Dave.
1. Showbiz
2. Pliers
3. Braids
4. Roebuck
5. Montgomery Ward
6. White Hen
7. Babbages
8. Fotomat
9. Dominick’s
10. Zayre
11. Kay Bee
Pre-order Service Merchandise: https://lnk.to/ServiceMerchandise
Photo credit – Robyn Von Swank