Gon — singer/songwriter Gon Halevi — will release his debut full-length album, Diagonal Fields, on October 25 via CEN/The Orchard. Today he premieres a cinematic video for the track “Alive” at Substream Magazine ahead of the track’s release on all DSPs this Friday. The visual demonstrates different ways of dealing with everything that prevents us from happiness and success.
“Gon’s music is grand and epic, and I wanted to make sure the visual aspect matches and empowers that,” director Sivan Chirqui explains. “I created a music video in which we see a man stuck in his own routine and old, unnecessary habits that oppress his spirit. The four dancers in the music video have a very clear goal: they need to keep him small and safe. Knowing that in order to grow he has to let go of those elements that block him, he tries to escape and fails. Eventually, he understands that loving them and being compassionate towards them would be the only way to allow them to let him go.”
“While all of this happens, we see the same man in an unending loop of lighting a candle and turning it off immediately afterward. I wanted the audience to see both options happen simultaneously: the one who learns to embrace his psychological blocks, and by living with them, let them go, and the one who chooses to stay small, and live this unending loop of self-destruct.”
So much of the best art is born out of resistance, or is propelled by the energy of pushing back against something. Reactionary in all the best ways, Diagonal Fields manages the rare trick of being personal, political, and deeply humane. Though he wouldn’t necessarily think to call himself first and foremost a gay songwriter, Gon is quick to point out the importance of being out—both in his life and in his songs.
Gon came to New York by way of Tel Aviv, and the swirling culture clash of identity and experience made for fruitful, if still somewhat uneasy, songwriting. After years of opera training influences and both speaking and singing in Hebrew, Gon shifted his focus to his own songwriting, peeling away the classical music gestures to find his own voice. Gon’s music details leaving home, learning to own an identity and past, and embracing everything that comes with being an Israeli outside Israel.
The eleven tracks on Gon’s full-length debut, Diagonal Fields, strike a delicate balance between piano-driven ballads and perfectly augmented cinematic chamber pop, all wrapped around a voice that is by turns plaintive, deeply emotive, and—for lack of a better term—swooningly operatic. Gon will play MONDO NYC at Pianos on Friday, October 18.
Pre-save Diagonal Fields here.