Jazz Emu announces visual concept album Ego Death
- Archie Henderson's creation, "musicological phenomenon" Jazz Emu, is releasing Ego Death, a "genre straddling" film of 10 interconnected videos, with each "complementing" a new album of songs
- Fan-funded in less than 48 hours, the "self-indulgent" 30-minute piece also features Harry Enfield, Alex Horne, Al Roberts, Charly Clive, Ellen Robertson, Phil Dunning, Ed Jones and Will Hislop
- Henderson said: "I loved the idea of making something of TV-length and quality, that would never and could never get on TV, because it's far too niche and specific and weird"
Comedy musician Jazz Emu is releasing a "hubristic" visual concept album, a "self-indulgent" 30-minute music film featuring a host of comic talent.
Harry Enfield and Alex Horne are among those to appear on Ego Death, a "genre straddling" piece of 10 interconnected videos, with each one "complementing" a song on the album.
Bypassing the current slowdown in television comedy commissioning, the film, by the self-described "musicological phenomenon" alter-ego of Archie Henderson, was funded through Kickstarter in less than 48 hours by fans.
Scheduled for release in January, Ego Death parodies horror and "surreal thrillers", as well as glossy high-fashion, and also features Al Roberts (Starstruck, Stath Lets Flats), Pure star Charly Clive and her Britney double act partner Ellen Robertson, Smoggie Queens' creator-star Phil Dunning, Ed Jones from Crybabies and Giants' Will Hislop.
Billed as "ambitious low-budget comedy filmmaking, which seeks to take the likes of Beyoncé's Lemonade, Prince's Purple Rain and The Lonely Island's The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, and push the parody-ripe field of self-indulgent concept albums into newer, weirder places", you can watch Ego Death's trailer here:
In a statement, Jazz Emu said: "How did I come to add this work to my oeuvre? Fantastic question. Whilst meditating in East Asia earlier this year, I suddenly realised I'd undergone a canonical Ego Death, and was now completely without ego. In fact, the monks who were there actually said it was the best Ego Death they'd ever seen; they'd never seen a more impressively, or indeed, aesthetically, dead ego."
Following the musician through the "true story" of his "Frankenstein-esque quest to create the perfect 'New Thing'", when it all goes horribly wrong, "Jazz is forced to watch the monstrous results of his hubris".
Ego Death pre-empts Jazz Emu embarking upon his debut UK tour, taking his band and acclaimed show Knight Fever around the country in February and March.
"The joy of writing for Jazz Emu is that he's really pretentious, and so any high-faluting aspirations I might personally have around my writing get immediately subsumed by the idiotic pretensions of the character, and become obviously stupid" Henderson told British Comedy Guide. "It's a fun game to play, and I've really leant into it in the writing of this. I hope it's not totally clear where the character ends and I begin when you watch it. It's definitely not clear to me anymore, anyway.
"I honestly had a few out-of-body-experiences on set; stepping out of myself and thinking "I can't believe this group of insanely talented people are assembled in this room to make me look like I'm a Rat Cheerleader, and no one at any point has queried it. I was having the time of my life, obviously."
The film, which finished shooting last month with a supporting cast of Rory Marshall, Eliza Nelson, Joel Stern and Ninette Finch among others, premieres at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, London on 23rd January and is available to pre-order online, with an additional screening at the GRUB venue in Manchester on 8th February.
Knight Fever attracted four star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe from The Telegraph, Scotsman and Evening Standard, while Jazz Emu charted at number 26 in a list of the Telegraph's funniest comedians of the 21st century last year, having been anointed "my new favourite comedian" by The Times' comedy critic Dominic Maxwell in 2022.
However, despite millions of online streams and both Radio 1 and Radio 4 airplay, former Cambridge Footlight Henderson has enjoyed little television exposure since he introduced the character in 2018, outwith an episode of 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown and the musical comedy showcase Dave Does Eurovision.
In 2022, the comic released a short online pilot which also featured Clive, Robertson, Janine Harouni, Rob Carter and Phil Wang, in which Jazz Emu, working for a failing music label, dreams of becoming the world's greatest "junktronica" musician.
Ego Death is directed by Henderson's long-time collaborator Hunter Allen, whose crew credits include Taskmaster, Joe Lycett's Got Your Back and Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains, and is produced by Alex Cartlidge (Blind Love On First Date Island) for Emu Incorporated in association with Country Mile Productions, the production company whose live comedy hits include Liz Kingsman's One Woman Show and acclaimed debut hours from Lorna Rose Treen, Ania Magliano and John Tothill.
"After making music videos together for a few years, we've been hankering for a larger project to get our teeth into for a while now" Henderson reflects. "We've pitched various versions of a Jazz Emu show around to TV commissioners, but we knew that in the current treacle-slow commissioning TV landscape, a goofy music-heavy character comedy is not an easy sell.
"But we've had a hope and a suspicion for a while, that if we came to our fan base online with a big specific project, and with a clear idea of how we might realistically achieve it, they might donate a little to make it happen. A few fans had suggested this in comments sections, but it was hard to tell just what kind of appetite there was for it. It was pretty amazing to have our whole target funded, and then some, in just a couple of days.
"And, like an incumbent government after a dubious election campaign, I took this as a mandate from the people to make Whatever The Heck I Wanted with no consequences! Specifically, this turned out to be dressing up as a big hench rat, in a full muscle suit.
"So this monstrosity of a hybrid comedy music video was born. The initial idea was a series of comedy songs that would all have accompanying music videos, and link vaguely into some kind of story. But I personally find that listening to relentless comedy songs in song form gets pretty grating after about fifteen minutes.
"There are only so many set-up/punchlines you can deliver in neat rhyming couplets, building to a satisfying chorus reveal, before it all starts to feel a bit samey. I wanted to find a way to ram this with loads of different types of jokes - wordplay, twisty reveals, cartoony visual gags, slapstick, my attempts at dancing, etc. - in a way that feels really tonally varied."
Writing all the songs and contributing the vocals, Henderson also played keyboards, synths, guitar, bass and electric saxophone, with Luke Bainbridge on drums.
"When I looked at the ten or so songs that I wrote in the first few months of the year, some with jokes and some not, all of them seemed to piece together into a sort of story shape, so I doubled down, and anywhere where there wasn't a lyrical joke, I tried to write something really visually stupid" he elaborated.
"As someone who is easily bored by regurgitation and repetition, it was a fun way to keep me stimulated while writing. And from a look at the initial cuts, it is guaranteed - if nothing else - to keep the audience stimulated too.
"Mainly, I loved the idea of making something of TV-length and quality, that would never and could never (should never?) get on TV, because it's far too niche and specific and weird. That's what the internet is for, and if there was any duty I felt it was to this idea. Everyone on our team finds the game of taking something incredibly stupid very seriously, really funny.
"All of our favourite music/comedy hybrids of recent years do this. Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, The Lonely Island, amongst others. And we wanted to bring that ethos in this too. And this is the biggest perk, I suppose, of self-funding things, in that there was no commissioner breathing down our necks with corporate accountability, and 'perspective', for better or worse."
Two songs from Ego Death, I Could Get Into It and Romanticise, have already been released online. You can watch them here: