By Keith Walsh
Every once in a while a music video comes along that gives you feels, in a great way.
Based on a song by Roberto Montoya and Ben Metcalf of Betamax Dub Machine, “Betanaut” features an interplanetary voyage that takes place in a young girl’s imagination.
I spoke with Montoya, who conjured up the song concept and presented it to Metcalf. “It was about an astronaut,” he explained, “so I was picturing him in a spaceship that looks like an old car… a vintage radio. But it’s actually a ship, and he’s cruising around, exploring places. And he starts missing home, so he finally heads back.”
The duo of BDM, who met on Facebook earlier this year, but not yet in person, are working remotely. Montoya lives in Austin, Texas and Metcalf in Okotoks, Canada. For “Betanaut,” which earned the distinction of Best Music Video at the 2021 Edmonton Short Film Festival, Metcalf came up with the video concept, which features his young daughter as the space traveler.
Coloration by Ethan Hill is very important to the look of the video. As Montoya explains: “It’s interesting, because Ben is actually color blind,” said Montoya. “So he took it as far as he could, and he said ‘you know what, to give it a really polished look, I’m going to go ahead and get somebody who can actually see colors.’ So he reached out to somebody on a producer’s group on Facebook and he was asking if anybody would be willing to work on the video, to color it, and somebody volunteered.”
Montoya lends his alto/soprano voice, to ‘Betanaut,’ presenting an experimental harmonic style, and played a keyboard melody on the track. “The lead in ‘Betanaut,’ the little keyboard part in the middle, that’s me,” he said. “I use a 25 key, small keyboard, and I use Native Instruments and Massive X for the patches and everything.” What DAW is he using? “I use Luna from Universal Audio.” I’m also looking forward to speaking with Metcalf about the instrumentation from this synth wave duo.
A brief message exchange with Metcalf revealed the following info: “I use Logic Pro as my DAW,” he wrote. “I use all soft synths. Ana 2 is my go-to synth but I also use Omnisphere 2, Massive, FM8, DS Thorn, and Spire. Drum-wise I have Kontakt, Maschine 2, and a host of old drum machine samples on Native Instruments Kontakt Sampler.”
Betamax Dub Machine are working on new material. “We have two more songs that are in the cue right now, that we are already working on,” said Montoya. “We haven’t really decided whether we want to do an album. It’s more like, ‘let’s get some singles out there and do some more video.’”
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