Video Premiere

Outronaut
“Crown Of Destruction”

The timewarp surf-noir instrumentals of OUTRONAUT have been kicking out of Steve Gerlach’s brain for five years now. One of the most individual acts in Chicago, Gerlach and friends produce a soundtrack to your most crime ridden thoughts, creating a bridge to your own inner noir film. Filmmaker Arturo Valle has taken a found footage concept and turned it into a barrage on the senses for OUTRONAUT’s new video for “Crown Of Destruction” off this year’s Kill The Lights. We spoke to Gerlach about his influences that shaped the unique sound, the making of the video, and his extensive commercial voice-over career.

SG: Steve Gerlach

Your new video for "Crown Of Destruction" is directed by Arturo Valle. How was the experience of working with him?

SG: Arturo and I were buddies first. In fact, our first bonding experience was a bachelor party. He’s definitely a humble, easy-going, talented fellow. Plus, he was excited about working on something in the rock music world. We had been talking about doing something together, and all the sudden, he had plenty of time for it!

Was the James Bond esque imagery his idea?

SG: We were more or less on the same page as far as what we thought was appropriate, but “In these uncertain times“, we were limited to existing footage. Fortunately, the band had just played our first show late last year at Liars Club, and my talented pal Jonathan Pollock had some footage from that, so Arturo was able to blend our shady activities in with the other shady stuff he had in mind.

Kill The Light is your fourth album as Outronaut. How did you settle on producing "surf-noir crime-jazz" as you put it? 

SG: What I always liked most about cartoons and the other television I watched as a kid was the music. The original Spiderman cartoon had incredible, menacing jazzy music, and I had revisited that stuff a few years ago. The vast majority of it still isn’t commercially available- you just find it on YouTube, but it was a big inspiration for OUTRONAUT, along with The Shadows, a pre-Beatles British guitar band, whom I never heard as a kid. They also got me interested in instrumentals again. So the influences were all even older than I am! 

After a long career working with many notable musicians and in local acts like Phantom Helmsman and The Bad Examples, what keeps the gears turning?   

SG: I guess the answer is hiding in plain sight in the previous answer: pushing in new directions. Most of my previous projects were relatively short-lived, whereas I have sort of settled on this instrumental stuff, and I’m writing the fifth album now. Melodies have been coming pretty easily, and I’m mostly post-vocal these days, so I can crank out lots of material without feeling like it’s taking any emotional or psychological toll on me! 

You're also a voice-over actor, what are some of your favorite gigs over the years?

SG: My dad played quarterback at Northwestern way back in the day, so football has kind of always been my sport, and I voiced Super Bowl spots two years in a row for WeatherTech, so that was kind of fun... the Alka-Seltzer plus spots in 2019 were kinda funny, too. I was very determined to find a way to make money at something I was good at. I never tried very hard to make a living with music, because I found, for me, personally, that took a great deal of joy out of it. We can’t all be Paul McCartney. In fact, I don’t know any Paul McCartneys.