Aesop Rock is all about the visual releases these days. Fresh off the back of his stunning new album The Impossible Kid, comes the third video clip from the album, for Dorks. This follows videos for Rings and Blood Sandwich, as well as the album-length film which recreated Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, scene for scene, using little dolls and stop motion animation.
His visual input makes total sense considering that this album, particularly Rings, talks about his relationship with visual art. He also recently ran a visual competition on social media, asking fans to create short videos inspired by his album.
Anyway, at the end of last week, Aesop unveiled the video for Dorks with the caption “Today we present to you the music video for Dorks, featuring an array of cooperative animals – some more than others. This was directed by Rob Shaw on a cold and rainy day. Please enjoy, and come check us out in a city near you.”
First, we see Missing Persons posters about Aesop, an opposing visual to the opening lyrics, “Question: if I died in my apartment like a rat in a cage, would the neighbours smell my corpse before the cat ate my face?” We soon find him in a dank back alley, donning animated face paint and hanging out with a bunch of animals. We later see a sniper – Rob Sonic, whom Aesop is heading out on tour with in the US (and hopefully Australia, right?) – making what looks like a kind of vicious molotov cocktail He hunts Aes down, but before he shoots to kill, a massive animated creature comes to his defence. It is no doubt symbolic of a creature within, exemplified in the hook, “Don’t need no help, all by myself,”
This is a really dark video, a gorgeous representation of one of the deepest tracks on the album.
Click here to read my full review of Aesop Rock’s phenomenal seventh solo album The Impossible Kid.
Image: Aesop Rock/Reddit