If Death From Above 1979 had finished their music video for the song “Dead Womb” (from their first, five-song EP “Heads Up” in 2002) the duo had a plan to try and get some air time for it. They were going to tie the tape of “Dead Womb” to a brick “and throw it through a window at MuchMusic,” the Canadian music/comedy TV network, headquartered in their hometown Toronto.
Nothing ever came of The Plan, because Sebastien Grainger and Jesse Keeler couldn't managed to shine off the video. But now, you can see what… glories could have been, should that brick have made it way into the Much channel building.
Today, HitFix debuts unreleased footage of “Dead Womb,” which is featured in the new documentary centered on the noisy dance-punk band, “Life After Death From Above 1979.”
“We filmed ['Dead Womb'] at my dad's work after hours (in a warehouse) when no one was around one weekend,” Grainger told HitFix. “It was never finished because no one had editing equipment or software. It was just Jesse Keeler, Jesse Foster (filming), this guy Dan, and me. We painted bedsheets as backdrops and used a forklift to get the camera above us. I believe I had JUST got my 1979 tattoo.”
“Dead Womb” itself was a blunt force, brash, assholish, unhinged and completely fantastic, just like the life, the death and the resurrection of DFA1979.
“LADFA1979” just arrived this week, exclusively via Vimeo On Demand; it was directed by Eva Michon, and sports interviews and music from the band, plus MSTRKRFT, Sebastian Grainger & The Mountains, Femme Fatale, CSS, Justice, MSTRKRFT, The Strokes, Metric, Yeah Yeah Yeah and more.
Death From Above 1979 formed in 2001, disbanded in 2006 after their stellar sole full-length “You're A Woman, I'm a Machine” and reconvened for Coachella in 2011. Their new album “The Physical World” came out in September.
Watch the rest o their story in the new documentary, the trailer for which is below.
Synopsis:
In 2001, after years of playing in various bands, living together, and bonding over a mutual desire to continue playing music while peers abandoned rock n' roll to follow more traditional career paths, Jesse Keeler (bass) and Sebastien Grainger (drums), started a band out of boredom and necessity. They hammered out their sound in an unfinished basement in the east end of Toronto, and the result is what many have described as “an elephant in your living room.”
They were propelled into the limelight based on the strength of their raucous live performances and the release of their seminal album, You're a Woman, I'm a Machine (2004). But as the band's success grew internationally, their friendship became strained due to constant travel, and little-to-no buffer between them. Over the course of grueling schedules and never-ending tours, they broke up in 2006, right after the biggest tour of their careers, and ended the band before reaching potential stardom.
In 2011, after five years of silence between them, and each focused on their own musical projects and respective lives, Jesse and Sebastien decided to reunite for one show: the legendary Coachella Music and Arts Festival. Life After Death From Above 1979 tells the story their rise, break-up, and coming back from the dead.