Stephen Steinbrink, an Oakland-based singer-songwriter and visual artist, is about to release his latest album, In A Split Mirror, toward the end of the week. We’ve already heard the album’s contemplative lead single “Magic Mirror.” Today, he unveils one final track ahead of the full release—the softly undulating “I’m A Swimming Pool”—accompanied by a vibrant animated music video created by Steinbrink himself. He explains:
Growing up in Arizona, I used to swim in a friend’s pool. My favorite move was to hold my breath, lie face down and aim to produce as little ripple in the water as possible to conjure a sense of total weightlessness. In Phoenix summers, the upper part of the pool often mirrored my own temperature, creating a sensation of disconnection from my body that I cherished, as if I belonged to the water. It’s really about inhabiting the pool.
To craft the accompanying animation, I collaged together photographs I’ve taken over the years with other external images to form small, phantasmagoric tableaux. I drew them over several months, redrawing the same image again and again and then animating them to generate the breathing, boiling movement in the colors and textures.
Listen below.
In A Split Mirror is scheduled for release on October 30 through Sedimentary Archive/Mansions And Millions. You can pre-order it here.
