We’ve seen so many tight new music videos in the past couple weeks, it only seems fair to share some of our favourites. Here’s some of them for your audio-visual pleasure.
Hopium: Right Now
Hopium were discovered by Triple J unearthed in 2014, and since them they’ve done some awesome things with electronica. The mysterious Melbourne duo create eerie, emotive beats and some of their previous music videos have been fucking stunning.
Right Now diverges from the earlier songs with more of an understated R&B vibe. The music video, directed by Yoav Lester, is inspired by American artist James Turrel (If you’re anywhere near Canberra it’s worth checking out his exhibition) and focuses on expressing emotion through colour and reflection. The two dancers are illuminated beautifully against a black or coloured background so that only the soft lines of their muscles can be seen.
The clip has some incredible moments, especially when the footage is reversed and we see the dancers twisted and contorted in a way that looks painful.
Rat and Co: The Farm, Live at Sugar Mountain
Another Triple J unearthed band have been absolutely killing it this year in the electronic world. Rat and Co have a booked out headline show at Shadow Electric’s Season Finale with Sleep D, and have been touring Melbourne as well as collaborating with Ben Thomas on Ta-ku’s Create and Explore project.
This music video features stunning interactive graphics and AV performance by Oliver Ellmers, as well as photography by Georgina savage. The clip is at once futuristic and retro. The graphics themselves float around the screen like an old apple screensaver, yet their definition and technique makes them inherently modern.
METZ: The Swimmer
And now we come to METZ…
Now METZ is known for going a little OTT with the weirdness in their music videos. But this is really something. Using very clever, subtle reverse/replay techniques they make the strung-out figures of their music video wobble back and forth through time. Stuck on a loop. It’s quite exhausting to watch actually.
The film has a bleak, doomsday aesthetic, and connotations of Requiem for a Dream immediately come to mind. All in all quite creepy, but also very effective.
Kali Uchis: Rush
Kali Uchis has been hailed as one of the most exciting up-and-coming talents to emerge in recent years, and with the recent success of her mixtape Por Vida, as well as an impressive touring schedule lined up for 2015, its easy to see why.
Hunger described the promising artist perfectly “looks cool as fuck, sounds cool as fuck. This is the beginning of something” – Hunger.
In their words, this latest video is cool as fuck. Shot with an 80s themed, sundrenched aesthetic, Rush is all about gorgeous girls in gorgeous outfits riding on cars in a fucking gorgeous countryside. Visually it is superb. Thematically… I was left feeling a little empty.
The film is so caught up in the visuals it doesn’t really say much about the song. Some may argue that this doesn’t matter. A good video clip is a good video clip. But girls have been playing with cars in sexy outfits since the beginning of film. The aesthetic has already been mastered, appropriated and repeated to the point that it is no longer much of an achievement. Personally I was hoping for something more.
Bon Voyage: Booshie
Bon Voyage is an interesting collaboration. It comprises the Brooklyn rapper and two young Irish producers from Dublin, The Supreme and Fono. It’s weird but it works. ‘Booshie’ is a slang term for someone who is spoilt, a little decadent, and that is exactly what this film depicts.
Bon Voyage shows of his glorious sense of humour with beautiful girls using him as a leg rest, making him wash up, cook, and a myriad of other things. Lol. It’s a bit of fun but it’s also a nice subversion of the usual gender roles in hip-hop music videos.