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Marina Allen, the Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter, unveils a new single/video, “Deep Fake,” from her upcoming third studio album, Eight Pointed Star, out June 7th via Fire Records. Following the album’s release, Allen will play record release shows in Los Angeles, New York City and London before supporting Ben Howard for a run of European dates.
Leading into the release of Eight Pointed Star, Allen has presented two singles: “Red Cloud,” praised by FADER for “[housing] a world as vivid as it is ambiguous and altogether irresistible,” and the “delightfully sunkissed” (Paste) “Swinging Doors.” Today’s new “Deep Fake” is a Noah’s Ark-style tribute to love and self-discovery that steps into the internet age, and speaks to the need to confront the parts of our society that make us most uncomfortable. The track features a special guest performance from Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy on guitar and synthesizer. Released alongside a brand new music video, directed by Callie Hernandez, it deals with themes of deep fakes in the digital sphere and face altering technology.
The “Deep Fake” video features Allen, or is it?, spliced into miscellaneous footage “The video superimposes Marina’s face onto the faces of myriad women via sourced archival footage- AKA ‘Deep Fake.’ The latter half of the video was shot on a glitchy DV camera, which was intentionally used to further blur the line between reality and fiction; real and unreal.”
Allen elaborates: “‘Deep Fake’ felt like a little revelation. It spun from this writing workshop I took, led by Chris Weisman. I took guitar lessons from him when I was 20. He has all these tools for songwriting, and ‘Deep Fake’ came out of a prompt. I can’t even remember what the prompt was. It’s sort of two different songs that I just put together. I wanted the first part to feel really personal, like talking to someone you love. It’s also about naming all of these very complicated things that make up our culture. Recognizing them as a reality. But to confront them and see it as sacred.”
Watch Marina Allen’s “Deep Fake” Video
Across two introductory records, Centrifics and Candlepower, Allen has ripened a rare harvest, but her third studio album is an arrival home. Taking fragments and stories from Allen’s past, storylines jettison and dance throughout. This timeless collection of songs is a clear-eyed modern classic of alternative folk and Americana that holds a curiosity as open to you as you are to them. It’s an album about discovery, searching with the eight points of a compass; about hope, gazing at the emanations within the eight points of a North Star; and about ancestry, being comforted by the eight-pointed stitching patterns used in quilt-making. Full of little, radical acts, coming from a place of truth, Eight Pointed Star favors a type of soul-searching that doesn’t dwell in complications, and is open to answers. Trust is the centrifuge around which themes of love, family and folklore unfurl across the album.
You can hear contentment radiating from the music, with Chris Cohen’s (Weyes Blood, Le Ren) production offering a full-band affair. The instrumentation is rich and bursting with brightness, as slide guitar drifts over acoustic thrums. Allen’s voice has never sounded more resolute than it does here, her songs holding a dynamism that conjure distinctive worlds of their own.
Pre-order Eight Pointed Star
Watch Marina Allen’s “Red Cloud” Video
Watch the Video For “Swinging Doors”
Marina Allen Tour Dates:
Thu. June 13 – Los Angeles, CA @ Scribble
Wed. June 19 – New York, NY @ Union Pool
Fri. June 21 – London, UK @ The Slaughtered Lamb
Mon. June 24 – Stockholm, SE @ Cirkus ^
Tue. June 25 – Oslo, NO @ Sentrum Scene ^
Wed. June 26 – Copenhagen, DK @ DR Koncerthuset ^
Sat. June 29 – Nijmegen, NL @ De Vereeniging ^
Sun. June 30 – Groningen, NL @ SPOT / De Oosterpoort ^
Wed. Oct. 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Ford *
Thu. Oct. 3 – Big Sur, CA @ Henry Miller Memorial Library *
^ w/ Ben Howard
* w/ Devendra Banhart
