NEW YORK (Virgin Records) - Virgin Recording artist A Perfect Circle's explosive new single "
Passive" will be the featured song in the upcoming motion picture "Constantine," from Warner Bros.
Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures, starring Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz. The supernatural-thriller, which marks the feature directorial debut of famed video director Francis Lawrence, will open nationally in the U.S. on February 18, 2005.
"Passive," the second single from APC's critically-acclaimed album "eMOTIVe," is set to impact active rock and alternative radio on January 18, but the song is already burning up the airwaves, with major market airplay in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington.
The Brothers Strause, visual effects supervisors for Constantine, and well-known video directors in their own right, are set to direct the upcoming "
Passive" video.
"Passive" was the result of an intense songwriting collaboration between APC's Maynard James Keenan and Billy Howerdel and Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor and Danny Lohner. "It's a song that I've been working on for a long time," says Keenan. "Originally it came from a couple riffs that Danny had written, and it's been through 20 incarnations."
The track is one of two original compositions on "eMOTIVe," an album that Keenan describes as "a collection of songs about war, peace, love and greed."
The album includes legendary protest songs by John Lennon and Marvin Gaye, along with such insurgent classics as Fear's "Let's Have A War," Depeche Mode's "People Are People," and Memphis Minnie's blues stomper, "When The Levee Breaks" (made famous by Led Zeppelin).
APC masterfully spans an array of genres - hardcore punk and heavy metal, new wave and Delta blues, folk rock and rhythm & blues - to convey feelings of anger, rebelliousness, hope, and despair.
"The commentary on 'Passive' seemed very apropos for this album," says Keenan. "The song is very much about apathy. I think a lot of the problems in this country have to do with people willingly staying asleep. They're allowing this administration to manipulate their decisions without actually getting involved in those decisions."
The song's message about passionately sticking up for what you believe in is a central theme of Constantine. Based on characters from the DC Comics/Vertigo "Hellblazer" graphic novels, the film tells the story of John Constantine (Reeves), a man who has literally been to hell and back. When he teams up with skeptical police detective Angela Dodson (Weisz) to solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beside the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Caught in a catastrophic series of otherworldly events, the two become inextricably involved and seek to find their own peace at whatever cost.
The film also stars Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Djimon Hounsou, Gavin Rossdale and Peter Stormare.
"If you really believe in something, step forward" says Keenan, reiterating the ultimate meaning of "Passive." "Voice your views, and let's help move everything forward. "
The response to the release of A Perfect Circle's latest CD "eMOTIVe" has been anything but apathetic. The album made a stunning No 2 with-a-bullet debut on the Billboard 200 when it was released on November 2.
The collection was the top-selling record on three SoundScan sales charts: "Top Album Retailers," "Top Hard Music Albums," and "Digital Albums" (marking the first-ever Virgin Records release to top the "Digital Albums" listing).
A Perfect Circle's second consecutive No 2 entry, "eMOTIVe" is also the band's third consecutive top 5 debut. Along with the commercial success of "eMOTIVe," the album has reaped a wide range of critical acclaim in a variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, Revolver, Entertainment Weekly, and the New York Daily News.
The New York Times spotlighted the album in the Sunday "Playlist" section recently, praising "new arrangements of old songs [that] switch familiar tunes like 'Imagine' and 'What's Going On' into minor keys behind Maynard James Keenan's desolate, androgynous croon." Commenting on the album's themes of war and annihilation, The Times notes that the CD's "ominous tone and bleak pessimism ... make it a soundtrack for blue-state malaise."
And just two short weeks after "eMOTIVEe" made its mark on the charts, the band released their first-ever DVD, "aMOTION," a collection of APC's classic videos along with an assortment of imaginative remixes.
"aMOTION" entered SoundScan's Top Music Video chart at No 4 and has recently been certified platinum by the RIAA.
"eMOTIVe" is A Perfect Circle's third full-length release, following 2000's RIAA platinum-certified "MER DE NOMS," and 2003's platinum-selling "THIRTEENTH STEP."
