The Dallas-based producer and musician Donovan Jones, who creates music under the moniker Black Taffy, returns on February 15th to release his Elder Mantis LP via Leaving Records. In anticipation of the upcoming record, Jones has a new video for the Elder Mantis track “Divining Rod,” directed by the audiovisual artist Sean Miller.
As Black Taffy, Jones often performs using Vibraphone and cassette decks to create rhythmic, bass-driven music combined with ambient atmospherics. The firstborn son of Pentecostal music ministers, Jones interest in sound as a means for accessing spiritual states of being has led him from his upbringing in Christianity to an interest in voodoo and the occult–with music and sound forming the connective tissue between these various practices.
A woozy ambiance suffuses “Divining Rod,” while slowed bass and percussion pulsate at the core of the track. Sean Miller’s visuals for the cut combine heavy effects processing and compositing utilizing abstracted fleshy footage to create images that are both bizarre and almost recognizable.
