“Boo Lean’s Neighborhood” is a feature length visual album/film created for the Virtually Nowadays streaming program during the height of Covid-19 lockdown. Shot on location across Pittsburgh, PA—soundtracked with a live DJ set recorded in my studio—it is my personal journey through the place I called home for many years… and of course, an ode to Pittsburgh’s own Mister Rogers, whose teachings felt more prescient than ever during isolation. Shuttered clubs, gathering places, gulleys and secret spots appear (IYKYK) along with an incredible landscape rarely seen from above. It was my way of processing a grief that I had no words for, suspended in time, a love letter to all the strangeness and contradictions and beauty that had shaped me.
Drone cinematography by Cornelius Henke, handheld camera Steve Gurysh.
I also joined Nina Posner, Geng (King Vision Ultra) PTP label head; John Twells (Xela), writer and editor previously of FACT and Boomkat; David Turner, writer and creator of streaming newsletter Penny Fractions; and MHYSA (Hyperdub) to discuss our experiences and methods of interacting within the music industry, and how we might move toward a more community-centered, artist-driven model of those structures both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
