Jamal Traub embraces a classic film technique
A truly delightful and creative series of music videos and video games is underway for "The Unstoppable" Jamal Traub, one of the Chattanooga music scene’s newest additions. His first album, Peripheral Love, was released earlier this year, and among many fine musicians features the violin work of our own Ernie Paik. Produced and orchestrated by Ross Carlson of Red Crow Studios, the album is absolutely beautiful.
The highly anticipated first video from the album is a stop motion animation for “The Fall”, a light-hearted song about a snail race. The song is a metaphor for the fall season, and about falling out of this world. The theme is letting go of pre-conceived notions, inhibitions, throwing caution to the wind, having fun, and using your imagination.
Back when Jamal was in high school, he and his younger brothers got into stop motion animation. He had borrowed a video camera from the school for a project, and they started messing around with it, doing some rudimentary animations with Ninja Turtle toys. He got a data entry job and worked for the summer to save up money to buy his own video camera. He has been doing stop motion ever since.
To produce “The Fall” video, Jamal is using a 16 Megapixel Sony Camera with HUE Animation software. The snails are made with modeling clay and sea shells. The video features a musical trio of mice, which were felted by CozyMilArt, and is also using a series of elaborate sets by faerie artist Carrie Viscome Skinner. The video is set to be released on Friday, November 25.
The song “Beautiful Blur” is partially based on Jamal’s three experiences with floods, two of which occurred in Kansas. Whenever he goes swimming, he goes under water and holds his breath, imagining that his fate as a human being on this planet is to drown in a flood.
Instead of making a music video for “Beautiful Blur”, Jamal is designing a video game to accompany the song. For this project, he is using a video game creation utility called Game Maker. In the game, the main character is thrown from a car off a bridge with a weight attached to his ankle.
After falling into the water, the player must navigate through various obstacles, avoiding sharks and other predators as they sink. The object of the game is to reach the bottom, where the character dies, breaking through into the afterlife.
“My philosophy is to get lost in whatever I’m doing. I’m not so much doing my art to make money or show off, it’s just a desire,” Traub explains. “It makes me happy when I’m in the midst of it. The feeling of creation, of being a god of an imaginary world feels great; you get a rush of excitement and adrenaline. Have fun with whatever you’re doing, and speak from your heart about whatever makes you passionate.”
Next year, he is releasing a video for “Summer Time Purples,” his song about having something other than the blues. For this video, he is employing his sign spinning skills—Sign Spinning is more than just a means of advertising, it has evolved into a professional sport that has a world championship every year in Las Vegas. (We highly recommend checking out the 2016 Championship Highlights.)
“You have to follow your own course, no matter what it is,” he notes. “You can’t be someone else. You can to a certain degree, but ultimately your work is going to reflect you, who you are. There’s no point to be like anyone else but yourself.”
Donning a purple morph suit, he will be visiting Chattanooga’s beautiful vistas and doing sign spinning tricks. Though he no longer spins signs professionally, Jamal still does it for fun—every Sunday, there is a meet up at Tennessee Academy of Gymnastics for jugglers, hula hoopers, acrobats, and sign spinners.
“The creative scene has really grown since I moved to Chattanooga in 2012,” Traub says. “I see a lot of great things going on. I’m involved with Soundcorps, and would encourage musicians to sign up at soundcorps.org. It’s really nice to see people like Stratton Tingle stepping up to promote music in town. We have a long way to go before some people will start taking us seriously, but this is an exciting town to be in right now.”
The album Peripheral Love is now available to stream on Soundcloud, or you can get a CD copy from Jamal at one of his shows.