Nicholas Murphy chose his moniker to honor Chet Baker, the American jazz musician known both as a trumpeter and a fragile, intimate singer. The Australian electronic musician, producer and rising soul singer — a.k.a. Chet Faker — has teamed up with his countryman Flume, the 22-year-old electronic producer. Together, they're releasing this fabulous track, "Drop the Game." This isn't their first collaboration: Flume and Chet Faker worked on Flume's self-titled record, and that record is up for an Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) award.
Chet Faker wrote to tell us that "Drop the Game" is a kind a shout-for sanity: "Everyone has these notions of what someone else wants, and it becomes this massive game."
The video for "Drop the Game" is by Lorin Askill, a filmmaker from Sydney currently in New York City. "I wanted this video to be a simple interpretation of what I love about Flume and Chet's track," he writes. "As soon as I heard it, I wanted to make something that had a dark and dirty undercurrent, with some haunting and beautiful elements crescendo-ing over the top."
The dancer here is Storyboard P, a mesmerizing dancer from Brooklyn. You may have seen him interpret Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail.
"Storyboard P kills it in this clip," Chet Faker writes. "He's powerful but disjointed, deliberately out of touch with the world around him, like he can't decide if he's bored or exhausted." For Lorin Askill, Storyboard P's lone figure, set against a nocturnal Brooklyn landscape, seemed like a perfect fit for "Drop the Game." The Lockjaw EP, a collaboration between Faker and Flume, comes out Nov. 26. Chet Faker performs in Brooklyn Monday night.
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