It’s video roundup time! Once again, Howl And Echoes are coming in hot with the freshest, most eyeball stimulating music videos to be dropped by the artists you love and some of the artists you don’t know you love yet, of this week. We do all the dirty work and herd them all into one convenient web-based location for you to enjoy every Friday so that you don’t have to. Have yourself a good old gander at the latest offerings from:
Aquilo – Never Seen You Get So Low
This one comes from Lancashire duo Aquilo. It’s a session video for their track Never Seen You Get So Low, one of the first to drop from their upcoming debut LP in 2016. The video was recorded in their own studio and turns the warmth and intimacy all the way up for a silky smooth melodic pop track.
Oneohtrix Point Never – Repossession Sequence
Jumping the Atlantic to New York for the next video, commissioned by Channel 4 Random Acts and Warp Records, it features several tracks by electronic producer Oneohtrix Point Never from his 2015 experimental album Garden Of Delete set to a video directed by Nate Boyce. I’ve got no idea what’s going on for about the first 40 seconds, the video resembling some kind of video game glitch set to a faint hum. The music, some of the most warped out, oddball electronica you’re likely to hear, drops in soon enough but the whole thing just looks like a bugged out video game throughout, though it’s perfectly suited to its soundtrack.
The head in the glass ball freaked me out the most. I’m not even going to try and explain it, just give it a watch if you don’t mind being deeply unsettled. Battles, Hudson Mohawke and Darkstar have all had videos commissioned for the series and they’re definitely worth checking out!
Gordi – Can We Work It Out
Sydney songstress Gordi enjoyed a massive breakout in 2015, nominated for Unearthed Artist of the Year, playing CMJ in New York City and wowing crowds everywhere along the way with her dreamy brand of folk served up with hefty lashings of pop. She has dropped the video for her biggest hit Can We Work It Out and it’s a cracker.
Driven along by some massive percussion, Gordi’s haunting vocals are amplified by the shadows, vivid colours lighting up the background in time to those lilting synths. The entire thing is a neon dream, exactly what you would expect from a song bound together by the unlikely combination of electronic and folk.
Check Gordi out when she plays the FBI SMACS/Sydney Festival on January 10th!
Banoffee – Body Suit
Sticking with Aussie songstresses, the latest single and video from Melbourne lady Banoffee is out. Body Suit is a track from her debut EP Do I Make You Nervous?, released earlier this year. She’s an innately visual musician and the clip is further proof. It features a cast of diverse characters gathering inside an establishment you can somehow still smoke cigarettes in (where is this???) to watch some kind of contemporary dance routine/cling wrap performance by Banoffee herself.
Their reactions are varied, mirroring the song’s central theme of the subjective nature of performance. The track itself is a laidback, sweet electro-pop number, Banoffee’s vocals stretching their wings across a wide range (that falsetto though, wow). The music video actually tells a story though, something becoming increasingly rare in recent times, and I can’t thank Banoffee enough for that. Check out our chat with her here.
Stillwater Giants – Patience
Props to Perth legends Stillwater Giants for the most fun film clip of the whole week. This one will make you want to load your car up with beers and head where the sunshine is going. Shot on a recent road trip the band took to Broome and featuring pub gigs, crocodile fights, cliff diving (so much cliff diving) and heaps more fun activities all filtered through what looks like the most psychedelic of Snapchat filters (it’s actually a mix of rotoscope, particle effects and hand-drawn animations done by drummer Angus), it’s just a fantastic visual accompaniment to a beers-in-the-sun surf rock song that’ll leave you wanting to quit your day job and live on the highway.
Printz Board and the Boardmemberz – Fuckin’ A
What a ripper of a song title. This one comes from Printz Board and the Boardmemberz out of sunny Los Angeles, an oddly-satisfying mash up of neo-soul, hip hop and acoustic rock (kind of like what Bruno Mars could be if he wasn’t terrible), for a track off of his latest EP Boarding Pass. The clip is an interesting one to go with it, shot underwater with dreadlocks and random objects floating everywhere (the kicker coming early when it’s shown that they’ve been tossed in there by a few pissed ex-girlfriends).
It’s a feel-good summery track about not giving a single fuck no matter how bad a day you’re having, a message everyone can appreciate I’m sure.
The Gooch Palms – Tiny Insight
This next one comes from Los Angeles via Newcastle ‘shit pop’ band, the delightfully monikered The Gooch Palms. Tiny Insight comes from their upcoming sophomore album Introverted Extroverts and it is an absolute cracker of a surf rock track. Lo-fi as all hell, the fuzz on those guitars absolutely sun-drenched. Like the aforementioned Stillwater Giants, The Gooch Palms have here given us an insight into their life on the road in this fantastic hazy adventure of a clip.
Tiny Insight is set to land on June 16th next year! You can catch them on the road in Brisbane with fellow surf punk legends Skegss and for a headline show of their own in late January.
Chet Faker and Marcus Marr – The Trouble With Us
When crime fighting musical collaborating duo Chet Faker and Marcus Marr teamed up earlier in the year and gave us The Trouble With Us, everybody’s limbs were just about overcome with the pure, unadulterated funk that song brought to the table. It’s looking to go way high in this year’s edition of the Hottest 100 and this week the accompanying video finally landed.
The best way I can describe it is a fast forward through the stages of a relationship if everyone was dressed like a preppy 50s teenager and did everything in choreographed dance form. Also slow-dancing and spit-swapping in the pouring rain. All doesn’t end well for these happy dancing couples though, people copping laundry and water and all kinds of stuff right in the kisser.
The clip works well in visualising the song’s central themes about the ups and downs of romance and it’s as fun and dance-inducing as the track itself.
Mystery Jets – Telomere
And just popping back across the pond again quickly, our penultimate video this week coming from London indie rock quartet Mystery Jets for their latest single Telomere. Heralding the release of their next album, January 2016’s highly-anticipated Curve Of The Earth, the track burns out a long and melodic fuse before kicking into gear for the chorus and soaring. the gigantic drums propelling singer Blaine Harrison’s voice into the stratosphere.
Everyone in the accompanying video looks like they’re out of Mad Max, mud and paint and dirt covering every surface, the contemporary dance routines and kaleidoscopic outro mean your eyes are never unstimulated. Curve Of The Earth drops January 15th.
Neon Indian – The Glitzy Hive
And last but not least we have Neon Indian throwing it down for the Go-Pro and Pitchfork joint collaboration GP4K. With a rendition of The Glitzy Hive, a track off of his absolute smash hit third album Vega Intl. Night School, it’s like one of those old Countdown clips from the 70s where the artist played on a television soundstage to a crowd (who totally weren’t actors) dancing around them, only this time everything is genuine and the neon is turned up to 11.
It’s a slick, funky, raunchy as fuck track and this live performance of it looks like the most fun anyone has ever had, ever. The use of Go Pros in filming this is crazy, they must have used at least a dozen of them at the rate and positions the footage is spliced into and it creates an almost 360 degree experience that is a nifty take on traditional music videos.
You can catch Neon Indian on his Australian tour kicking off this week!