Hailing from Ohio, Equipment is the brainchild of singer/songwriter and vocalist, Nick Zander. His knack for crafting quippy, and cleverly atmospheric songs attracted guitarist Jacob Scott (They/them), bassist Ellie Hart (they/them), and drummer Jake Pachasa (he/him) to join his journey as an artist and grow the band into its complete state. Today, Equipment have announced their upcoming full-length record Alt. Account due out September 29th via the band’s own label, Klepto Phase. To celebrate this news, Equipment has released a brand new track “LO/FO” today, along with its accompanying b-side, “username“.
Equipment created an incredible music video for “LO/FO”. Zander gives an in-depth look at the process and concept for the video, sharing, “We always knew we wanted to do a video for this song. I had a couple vague ideas that sounded really silly — like the synchronized birdwatching, or dressing all white like a boy band — but we weren’t able to expand upon any single idea in a deep way. We ended up spending the summer filming a few takes of the song for every funny idea we had, like, quantity-over-quality style. Filming the video was basically 80% hanging out and 20% “oh yeah we should probably do that video now,” so we’d change into our goofy outfits and get a few takes. It looks like we’re having fun in the video because that’s pretty much all we did, we just turned the camera on long enough to capture it.”
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“We shot it over two months with probably 5 or so full days of filming,” he continues. “I live in Denver now so I tried to ration my visits back to Toledo just enough to be able to play a few shows and get things like this video done. It probably cost less than $100 to film because we did most of it ourselves. I say that as if we had money to not do it ourselves, lol. I got to know my Sony mirrorless camera quite well, and spent probably a couple dozen hours on Adobe Premiere. Prop shopping involved using weird stuff we already had, screwing around at the dollar store, and we may or may not have participated in the ol’ buy-and-return trick for a couple things.”
Equipment truly put in an impressively dedicated amount of time and effort into “LO/FO” to make the video come to life. “I was so, so relieved that it all came together so well. I come from an “old YouTube” background so a lot of video stuff is engrained within me at this point, but I was still super nervous that the footage we got was gonna look like trash once I sat down to edit. Thankfully, I think it looks pretty good, despite the fact that we accidentally shot in slow motion a few times (easy fix). I’m proud of us for the fact that we’ve learned to become hella self-sustaining.”
“Like, we do the music videos, packing and shipping, tour booking, and pretty much everything else ourselves, with the help of some friends. Throughout seven-or-so years of ups and downs, it’s been hard to stay 100% optimistic in the band at all times. Despite that, I’m glad we’ve held on this long, because I don’t think any other path we could’ve taken would have led to us dressing like NSYNC on a boat.”
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A band inspired the the likes of Jeff Rosenstock, PUP, and Weezer, they teamed up with Steven Warstler to produce the album at Mat Kerekes‘ (Citizen) studio in Toledo, OH. A group inspired by their own youth, mental health struggles, and many different versions of ourselves we can be in a life time, they are breathing a unique breath of fresh air into the emo genre. Keep and eye on Equipment, because they will surely be a key member of the next wave of popular emo music.
Alt. Account track list:
1. Hot, Young Doctors
2. LO/FO
3. Hollister Henleys
4. Bad Bets
5. Jewelry
6. Minnow
7. Username
8. Your Clothes Without You In Them
9. Perfect Temperature Coffee
Equipment upcoming tour dates:
- Oct. 13 – Bowling Green, OH @ Fauxchella
- Oct. 14 – Bowling Green, OH @ Fauxchella
- Oct. 17 – Columbus, OH @ Big Room Bar
- Oct. 18 – Lansing, MI @ The Goblin Zone
- Oct. 19 – Kalamazoo, MI @ The Black Lodge
- Oct. 20 – Chicago, IL @ Book Club
- Oct. 21 – Milwaukee, WI @ 4Seasons Skate Park
