Summer Dreaming in California with the Brooklyn-Based Trio
“The title alludes to the idea that no matter how many layers you feel you have to add when you are in a different place, you are still yourself,” explains Spanish émigré and Gold Lake singer Lua Rios, of atmospheric new track, “We Already Exist.” Rios emigrated to Brooklyn with fellow countryman, guitarist Carlos del Amo, in 2009, and the line-up is completed by drummer Dave Burnett. The three are currently prepping the band’s second album, mixed in Seattle by Phil Ek, revered producer of such big-time indie acts as Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen and The Shins. Today’s hazy depiction of the Golden State coastline was captured over two days by Seattle-born, LA-and Portland-based filmmaker Christian Sorensen Hansen, whose high-definition riffs on the American landscape on show in work for Pull & Bear, Blackberry and Atlantic Records’ signing Kitten attracted the band to him. The director settled on the eucalyptus forests, sand dunes and dramatic coastline of Los Osos, and enlisted an anonymous friend to play the icosidodecahedron-headed protagonist. “We camped over one night, and shot the final scene the second day right after sunrise,” recalls Hansen. “It was only six in the morning, but there were already fishermen out on the rocks, looking equally baffled and excited. They continued to fish and we continued to shoot—blistering cold, naked actor and all.”
