MAGNET Exclusive: Premiere Of The Color Forty Nine’s “We Send Satellites” Video

The Color Forty Nine certainly has its ducks in a row when it comes to seasoning and connections. Members of the San Diego quartet have toured with the Black Heart Procession, Eric Bachmann and Pinback. They’ve also managed to eke out a few albums over the past several years, including their fourth, the self-released A Whisper, due February 28. The album was recorded at home and at Mexico City’s Estudios Noviembre with help from Grammy-winning engineer Dave Parra (Café Tacvba). It offers more of the group’s vast, sun-scorched balladry and hauntingly atmospheric desert rock, along with an imaginative interpretation of Nick Cave’s “Jubilee Street.”

“We Send Satellites” was the final song written for A Whisper. “With all the wonderful distractions the world has to offer, we often get caught up in thinking about our own needs and concerns,” says the Color Forty Nine’s Phil Beaumont, who wrote the song’s lyrics. “It’s a big, bad, beautiful world, and it’s good to get outside yourself and not be afraid to let it in.”

A homemade affair, the video was filmed in Beaumont’s attic, with a cheese-grater doubling as a spaceship. “I decided to give myself two to three evenings to work on something simple and just use elements around the house,” says Beaumont. “I first made a satellite out of paper and was just going to have it fly through the various chotchkes around my house, ‘looking down upon this old world of ours.’ Then my friend Cynthia floated the idea of filming inside a cheese-grater. I tried it out, and the effect is quite lovely.”

The band is celebrating the release of A Whisper on March 1 with a show at Panama 66 in the San Diego Museum of Art that also features the Black Heart Procession, Monatlban Quintet and Hasco Enjoyments.

We’re proud to premiere the Color Forty Nine’s “We Send Satellites” video.

—Hobart Rowland