UPSKIRTS: Open Yourself to the Sky
About to head off on tour, this cheekily titled band have released an awesome new music video to go with their latest single Open Yourself to the Sky, off their EP Barely Moving. Featuring gorgeous graphics, the film details the adventure of a little cosmonaut floating through space, as he encounters flamingo dragons, creepy hands holding space fox-owls and and golden woman. Upskirts’ message to stay open-minded and expand your boundaries works perfectly with the film’s intergalactic adventure. The lo-res, pixelated quality of the animation gives it a lovely old-school vibe. (PS – check out the Fave Tunes playlist they made for us).
Alison Wonderland: Take it to Reality ft. Safia
Coming off a string of fabulous sets at Splendour in the Grass and Lollapalooza, Alison Wonderland has just dropped a music video for Take It To Reality, her third single off recent album Run. The music video was filmed across the sold out Wonderland Warehouse Project 2.0, and features some gorgeous cinematography and lighting. Animated white lines flicker around people’s faces and hands, giving the clip a slightly Disclosure vibe. It really does make the warehouse parties look like they were an incredible spectacle – which admittedly, is not what we discovered when we headed to the Brisbane event.
Raleigh Ritchie: Bloodsport ’15
With competition ever growing between artists to be noticed online, they say the first few seconds of a music video are what really counts. Raleigh Ritchie gets that. The opening shots reveal a closeup of simmering bathwater. Slowly, ever so slowly, Ritchie’s beautiful head emerges. Hot Damn. It was one thing to enjoy him as Grey Worm in Game of Thrones, but this is something else.
After this point the music video really becomes like any other: the classic breakup story, Ritchie cutting up ex’s clothes and flushing her shoes down a toilet. It’s worth mentioning the adorable red beanie/creepy face mask at 3:00, though. Bloodsport’15 is a reworking of the same track that originally appeared on his 2013 EP Black and Blue. The new version features additional string components provided by Rosie Danvers and Wired Strings, a troop that have featured on tracks by Coldplay, Kanye West, Adele and heaps more.
Wells: Fractures
Sydney four-piece Wells have released a music video for their debut single Fractures from their EP The Pale King, and it is really quite creepy. The striking film simply features a man waking up in the desert and proceeding to start staggering towards the camera in slow motion. In the final moments of the song the perspective changes – we see that in fact, he’s been walking towards a woman who lies on the ground. The cinematography is stunning. The whole thing reminds me of the recent thriller It Follows, (awesome movie, if you haven’t seen this go and watch it) in which the ‘haunting’ that is passed between people in the film manifests itself in the form of someone following you at walking pace.
tUnE-yArDs: Rocking Chair
tUnE-yArDs actually released their track Rocking Chair almost a year ago, as part of their Nikki Nack LP, but it feels just as warm and relevant today, released afresh with a new music video. Sarah Pupo lends cave-drawing like visuals to a song that is composed on simple, rich vocal harmonies. Such a beautiful song. The primary colours and use of light and shade give the primitive images a feeling of intense warmth and joy.
David Gilmour: Rattle that Lock
Continuing in the vein of awesome drawings and animation, the Pink Floyd legend has released a fucking monstrous new music video for Rattle that Lock. Based on the famous poem Paradise Lost, the music video required a team of 12 animators, artists and composers working around the clock for three months to bring all of its narrative and technical elements together. The result is spectacular, with an animated style that hints at gothic, Japanese anime and Greek mythology and featuring an incredible attention to detail, the music video explores a dark, mysterious world. A frightening black bird takes us from place to place, interacting with various creatures and monsters. Also incase it didn’t already feel trippy enough, that repeated sound that runs throughout is exactly the same as they play in the French railway system (fun fact). Rattle that Lock is the first track to be lifted from Gilmour’s latest album of the same name, so who knows what he’ll put out for his next song. Hopefully something even more ridiculous.
Earl Sweatshirt, Off Top
Recently in town for Splendour in the Grass and a run of sideshows, Earl Sweatshirt has released a fittingly gritty, animated video clip for off his album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. The bare track is set against a series of stark, scrappy cartoon scenes, mostly featuring Earl trying to run away and escape his demons. Trains, demonic creatures, flames and police vehicles all pose threat to the hellbent Earl – for a video less than two minutes long, it’s pretty damn disturbing. Earl has been vocal about his experience with mental illness, and this is a dark embodiment of his inner journey.
RÜFÜS, You Were Right
We’ve been waiting a long time for new RÜFÜS, and our prayers were answered in June when they released the delicate You Were Right. The clip now has an equally lovely clip, directed by KATZKI and produced by Marcus Butler. Gorgeous blue hues dominate the scenic landscape, which follows in a very similar vein to many of their previous clips. Each three band members (and later, a wide array of men, women and children) are featured in their own standalone scenes. Gradually, gravity gives way to each person, moods lift, feathers fly, and the wistful atmosphere becomes rather free, and joyous.
Youngs, Serasan Shakes
This is a really wonderful track from the Melbourne four-piece, and the clip is the perfect complement to the Andrei Eremin-mastered, Anna Laverty-produced single. The forlorn, sentimental track sings of lost love, and video perfectly encapsulates that feeling. Created by Sami Sommariva, who has worked with Flying Lotus, the beautiful scenes have a vintage feel and a demanding sense of nostalgia. Splashes of invigorating, flowery colour and band members painted in white are interspersed with a lonesome house and desk adorned in books and trinkets. It’s eerie to say the least, and only grows more and more surreal as it progresses.
Kendrick Lamar: Alright
This one actually came out a few weeks ago, but it’s worth mention. Kendrick Lamar’s new music video for his track Alright, which comprises part of the How to Pimp a Butterfly album is incredible. Raw, tactile and deeply moving, it is as much a protest piece as a work of art. The clip begins with a two minute intro, black and white, high definition shots reveal San Francisco in a darker, much more haunting light. High-rise city buildings are portrayed alongside the poorer areas, where street fires, graffiti and violence take the forefront. Lamar was nominated for a VMA for the music video this year, which conveys just how strong the piece was. Containing lyrics like “I rap I’m black, on track so rest assured” and “And we hate po po, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure” Alright definitely one of the more controversial tracks to be nominated for an award.
Hudson Mohawke: Warriors ft. Ruckazoid, Deveaux
HudMo has delivered a very exciting new music video to go with their track Warriors, which portrays Clipses’ Pusha T as a futuristic warrior, fleeing authorities in the near future. The song is uplifting, combining soaring electronica with warm, gutsy vocals. What better aesthetic to pair with it than a modern day superhero running through the streets at night. The film itself has a beautiful faded quality to it, black and white shots of HudMo are blurred and distorted with a pumping strobe. All in all its quite fab.
Thundercat: Them Changes
Thundercat’s latest track Them Changes is a smooth, soulful reminiscence on loss and heartbreak. Carlos Lopez Estrada, the amazing director behind its awesome music video spoke about creating a film to explore the songs unique take on suffering.
““Thundercat’s take on heartbreak is so atypical that I figured the video for the song should be anything but a classic relationship-gone-wrong story,” notes Estrada. “Stories like athletes’ careers ending after injuries or artists losing their site/hearing/ability to perform; these concepts are truly heartbreaking. I also know that Thundercat has a thing for samurais – so I saw an opportunity to make everyone happy here. Or everyone sad, I guess.””
Coin Banks: Cursive
From looking at his music videos, the way they capture the hustle and bustle of New York’s streets you’d assume Coin Banks was a local. He’s actually from Perth. This latest music video is a modern day love story, following the journey of two young kids as they cross paths. The kids are quite adorable, and the idea works well. My only criticism is the big cartoon words that flash across the screen. In some ways they add to the juvenile charm of the film, but they also make it seem slightly like an advertisement. Coin Banks has done an incredible amount in the last twelve months, dropping two EPs as well as multiple international tours.
Slum Village ft. Bilal and Illa J: Love Is
A few months ago Slum Village released their epic album Yes. It was truly groundbreaking in the way that it tied their smooth, old-school hip hop sound with themes and social commentaries that were inherently modern. You can read more about the album here. Love Is is the first track on the album, featuring a thumping beat and a gorgeous sexy hook by Bilal, it sets the tone of the album. Slum Village’s music video is classy, combining handheld shots of themselves with footage of the streets of San Fransisco. The shots are often lagged, kaleidoscoped or have completely enhanced colours, emphasising the upbeat, chaotic nature of the song.
Jack Garratt: Weathered
I’m going to put myself out on a limb here and say that Jack Garratt is destined for big things. Potentially to become the next big thing. His latest single Weathered has already had over 150k plays on Soundcloud and huge support from the media all over the world. A couple of days ago he released this beautiful music video to go with it. Documenting the journey of three real-life brothers as they explore the canyons in Georgia, USA, the clip evokes powerful feelings of nostalgia and familial bonding.
To be honest, Weathered as a track could have done a little more for me. It starts with this gorgeous choir-esque moaning and a sharp, thumping beat. But after that it kind of mellows out into a reflective ballad, containing none of the power or sexiness that we fell in love with Garratt’s first single The Love You’re Given. Garratt may still be fine-tuning his sound, but once he does shit’s going to get real. Trust me.
Oscar Key Sung: Brush
Oscar Key Sung has released a music video to go with his smooth, sexy track Brush, which comes straight off his latest EP Altruism. The clip is low-key, fashionable and effortlessly cool… everything that we could have expected from Key Sung plus a little more. Two dancers bounce around in front of a white screen in different outfits, sometimes all white and sometimes all black. Their movements are so in sync that the clip is able to cut effortlessly between the outfits. The idea is simple but it somehow comes together perfectly to create a music that is so subtle and joyous. We had the incredible opportunity to chat with Key Sung about the album a couple months ago, which you can read about here.
R.W. Grace: Shell
R.W. Grace must be the master of making people cringe. Her latest single Shell is dark, reflective and, unsurprisingly, rather disturbing. R.W. Grace exploded onto the music scene with her first single Pluto, receiving praise in the alternative music world, and heaps of support online. Containing lyrics such as:
“Desperate like a bottom feeder/ drain the tank until it’s weak/
and I bleed for it/ and I bleed for it”
Grace instantly made a name for herself as a powerful, liberating female figure, revolting against the typical expectations that the industry has of female solo artists. In her latest single Shell, R.W. Grace cries out against the internal and external conflict of her world. She depicts herself undergoing a series of violent experiments, including having a syringe inserted into her neck and an arm amputation. Be warned it’s fairly graphic.
Gilligan Moss: Choreograph
Such is the maturity, and sophistication of Gilligan Moss’ sound, you’d think he’d been around for a while. But Choreograph is in fact the New York artists’ first ever single. The song is awesome, combining electronica, eerie vocal loops and gentle beats with sound effects that you could almost imagine in a horror film. Moss pairs it with a music video that is equally sophisticated. The clip uses jump cuts, time loops and split screen to create an indefinite cycle of family life. While a child sits at the breakfast table listening to music on his headphones, his family whiz around him, completely caught up in their daily routines. It is a powerful commentary on taking notice of your surroundings.
Coda Conduct: Paint it Gold
Since the release of their first EP Butter Side Up in March, Canberra girl-duo Coda Conduct have been absolutely smashing it. Their ballsy not-shits-given attitudes ring through in their music in a way that is unique and incredibly refreshing. Paint it Gold is their first single since the EP, blending disco, rap and trap in a way that is effortless and incredibly effective.
The music video starts out strong, with each half of the duo rapping one on one with the camera and taking ownership of their lines. However is we get to the chorus it kind of… slumps. Just a little bit. I think the anticipation built up in the rapping segment led to the expectation that the music video would take off at the chorus. Instead it goes to slow motion shots of things being smashed. The cuts are effective, but they really slow down the pace of the song. Regardless, Coda Conduct offer a unique and incredibly promising take on hip-hop.
Knxwledge: Flyinglizrds
There are good music videos, and then there are fucking good music videos. This belongs to the latter category. Knxwledge has created an animated piece to go with 1 minute and 40 seconds of sound that is absolutely mind boggling. Words really can’t describe the amount of time and effort that must have gone into creating such a deeply layered animation. The visuals are absolutely stunning, combining bold lines, strokes and images to create a powerful supplement to the music. Knxwledge already proved that he was an artist to watch out for when he dropped his debut Hud Dreems earlier this year. Here he’s demonstrated his genius yet again. Catch him at Splendour In The Grass this year.
Jarryd James: Give me Something
Jarryd James exploded onto the music scene earlier this year with his fabulous single Do You Remember. His unique beats combined with intense, mesmerising vocals instantly warranted huge success. Now he’s at it again.
The music video is subtle but incredibly effective. Set in the desert, it simply features the artist staring out the window at a blonde lady who walks around the pool outside. Using rewind/replay techniques, it wobbles two and fro with the beat at every chorus, distorting the idea of the film as a linear narrative piece about unrequited love. James has some exciting stuff lined up, including working with Malay, the Grammy-winning producer who’s responsible for Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange.
Jack Grace: Hills
Jack Grace is another Australian artist who has been using time and repetition in a really interesting way. In his first single Hills, which will be featured on his forthcoming debut album, Grace loops fragments of sound that you wouldn’t normally hear in the underlying beat of a song. The result is awesome, simultaneously beautiful and slightly unnerving. He continues this notion in the music video, using footage that he took whilst driving between NYC and Vermont. The footage is repetitive, almost like a continues montage, but he combines it with shots of his own head to create a powerful, distorted video. The artist said he wanted the clip to reflect the track and encapsulate the unspoken separation often felt from those closest to us.
Big White: You Know I Love You
Big White have dropped their first official single, and released a lovely self-directed music video to go with it. The clip is filmed in their spacious Art Deco share house, and even features a special appearance from their cat Cleo. The clip’s joyous 80’s nostalgia ties in perfectly with Big White’s sound, which guitar heavy and grungy, ever so slightly reminiscent of The Cure or The Smiths. Big White have been scoring heaps of airtime on Triple J for You Know I Love You, and have a big line-up of support roles for shows along the East Coast.
Dornik: Drive
Dornik has just released his soulful new single Drive, from his self-titled upcoming album. The song is smooth, sexy and crooning, evoking old-school funk and modern electronica simultaneously. Dornik’s storytelling prowess is extended even further with the music video, which speaks almost stronger the song at some points to reminisce on teenage lust, sneaking out late and drinking alcohol. Drive is a love story, combined with the underling threat of violence, trouble from parents, essentially everything that we glorify a teenager’s life to be like.
Disclosure: Holding On ft. Gregory Porter
Disclosure actually released their latest single Holding On, which is featured on their upcoming album Caracal a little while ago. Fair enough, it’s damn catchy. Now they’ve finally put out a music video to go with it. The film is shot entirely in Mexico City, and comprises Part One of a four-video series that will provide a visual accompaniment to the album. Set in the near-distant future, it follows the life of a gorgeous young lady who deals with hardcore parties, familiar pressure, native lore and modern censorship. To be honest I was left a little confused. But hey! Maybe by part four it’ll make a little more sense.
Golden Vessel: Borrowed Time ft. Tiana Khasi
Australian producer Golden Vessel has done some marvellous things. But this music video for Borrowed Time, directed by Grimbleism, is probably his best achievement so far. The film is clean, refined, and beautifully put together, toeing that border between film and art. Each shot is perfectly composed so as to capture the binaries of light and shade, black and white, industrial and organic. Tiana Khasi, who lends her gorgeous vocals to the track is featured in the film. As the song increases in pace so to does it’s visual counterpart. Khasi’s face is cut into a kaleidoscope, and the shots become darker and more complex. The film and the song work together perfectly.
Bree Tranter: More Sex & Love
Bree Tranter wrote More Sex & Love with her roommate in in their Paddington studio apartment. The song is gentle and powerful, building on a simple beat with Tranter’s beautiful, ethereal vocals. The concept for the music video came from Tranter’s time at Secret Garden Festival in February, where she was captured by Scott, the man who dances in the clip, who was swaying to the tunes of Donny Benet. His movements are exaggerated with lighting and slow motion. Soft pink and purple lights, as well as billows of smoke recreate that sense of enchantment that Tranter probably felt at the time.
Ayla: Waiting
Ayla slammed herself onto the music scene in 2014 with her debut single Wish I Was. She was soon discovered by Triple J unearthed, and was later labelled the most played female solo artist on Triple J for that year. With a voice much more powerful than you’d expect from a 20-year-old, Ayla has been doing some amazing things. Waiting is her latest single, coming off her upcoming EP which will be out later this year. The track is searching and powerful. It’s accompanying music video is perhaps a little cliché, but it really works to establish the artists’ image. Featuring lots of rose petals and stormy oceans it is commanding and inherently feminine.
Mìo: Back to You ft. Erik Lindestad
Back to You is one of those songs that immediately gets under your skin. Somewhat reminiscent of Mad World, but with awesome synths and harmonies, the track conjures feelings of isolation and loneliness. The music video that goes with it is stunning. Perfect cinematography captures two young teenagers (I want to call them boys..?) who go to the skate park, and after a while of watching the adults end up getting invited back to one of their parties. The film has an underlying sense of yearning and loss, it isn’t established whether the kids have run away from home but they try to set up a bed at the skate park. It’s an emotional journey.
JMSN – Bout it
JMSN has released what is possibly the most hilarious music video of the year, for his latest single Bout It. The clip features the artist singing his heart out in various windy places looking forlorn, reflective and terribly dramatic. I personally got Jesus vibes… It’s been a sweet run for JMSN lately, he’s had vocals on Kendrick Lamar tracks as well as on Ta-Ku’s latest album. He’s also set to do a live Boiler Room set with Ta-Ku tomorrow night in Perth, in which Ta-Ku will be debuting his new album. You can also catch him at Splendour!
Lianne La Havas – What You Don’t Do
Lianne La Havas is one of those artists you just know is going to be big. She is absolutely stunning, and her songs are both charming, uplifting and incredibly honest. The music video for her latest track What You Don’t Do is simple and tasteful. Directed by Leila and Damien De Blinkk, it follows a bit of a jungle theme, using a really beautiful colour scheme of greens, pinks and blacks. The film plays with lighting to highlight La Havas almost as if she’s in a spotlight. La Havas’ eagerly anticipated second album Blood is set to come out on July 31st.
Japanese Wallpaper – Forces ft. Airling
Melbourne based songwriter, producer and instrumentalist Japanese Wallpaper (who is on tour next week) has released a gorgeous video for his latest singe Forces, and it is absolutely uplifting. The film is directed by Jacques Poluleuligaga, and features a girl walking around a big rainforest. It seems simple, but Poluleuligaga captures that incredible peaceful feeing of being completely surrounded by the forest. The track itself is beautiful, featuring vocals by Airling. For more Japanese Wallpaper, check out our review of his latest record here.
Eska – Shades of Blue
One of the UK’s most loved, yet little known singers, has finally taken the centre stage with the release of her new self-titled album. Shades of Blue features on the record, and it is absolutely adorable. Eska has been well-known as a go-to collaborator for years, working with artists like Grace Jones, Cinematic Orchestra, Ty, Tony Allen and Bobby McFerrin. Here she comes into her own. Eska conveys her warm humorous personality effortlessly, both through the lyrics and in her sassy performance. The clip itself is really effective, using patterns with ink to highlight the different emotional impact of various colours.
HOWQUA – Her
HOWQUA has released a fabulous song and video in celebration of women! The song initially started out as a celebration of the artists’ sister, but soon grew to encompass all of the women in his life. The music video features a series women that mean a lot to the artist personally, dancing in front of the camera. It starts out incredibly cute. Everybody’s a little bit awkward but in a nice way.They aren’t actors, they are family and friends so the film has a really nice honesty to it. My only criticism is it doesn’t really move on from that.. as empowering as this track may be, it gets a bit old watching people dance uncomfortably for over three minutes.
Requiem – Louvres
Watching this, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or take it seriously. The track features vocals by singer/songwriter David Crowe, and gives a rapper’s documentation of the artists’ relocation from Melbourne to Darwin. He talks of adjusting to the different way of life, of eating pawpaw salad, sharing a sunset of orange and pink and waiting up for the monster rain. I think a lot of Australian hip-hop and rap artists try to sound like something they’re not, and become part of this bigger Aussie hip-hop narrative, resulting in a sound that is generic and inauthentic. It’s nice to have an artist rap about what he’s really experiencing.
Seth Sentry – Hell Boy
Seth Sentry’s been killing it lately. His latest track Hell Boy has made number one on Aria Charts, and his most recent album Strange New Past was featured as Triple J Album of the Week. The music for Hell Boy is humorous, if not slightly creepy. It features an angrier, more aggressive side to Sentry that we haven’t really experienced before. He speaks about letting that bad side of you shine through, and the clip features a naughty child who goes around doing just that. Sinister lighting highlights the shadows and lines of Sentry’s face, turning that cuddly guy that we’re so used to into someone much scarier. The clip’s actually really effective. For more on Seth, read our feature interview here!
Mosman Alder – Colours
The six-piece Queensland band scored critical acclaim for their debut album Humdrum Star, and now they have a stunning new music video for their recent single Colours. The film features a beautiful girl in a white, heavily fringed two-pice walking around different parts of rural Queensland. She looks fabulous, the countryside looks great, it’s really quite hard to go wrong.
Filmmaker Michaela Holmes has taken the clip a step further though, but cutting and overlapping images in such a way that each instrumental component of the song is emphasised. In this way, as the song builds in pace so too does the video, becoming more dissected and abstracted as it goes along.
Humdrum Star was apparently originally inspired by a conversation about colour symbolism. Interesting, considering the music video is actually incredibly unsaturated, featuring mostly dull greens, browns and greys.
After becoming the most tweeted about artists of SXSW, Halsey has just released her Room 93 EP worldwide, a collection of gorgeous, otherworldly pop songs. Ghost is the haunting lead single from the EP, as well as the introduction to her forthcoming album Badlands, set to come out later this year.
This music video is designed with grace and sophistication. Shot in Japan, it combines beautiful layering with a gorgeous neon colour scheme in a way that is both feminine and edgy simultaneously. Ghost explores themes of intimacy and loneliness, my personal favourite line describes that feeling of suddenly being disconnected from the person who you are sleeping with.
“My ghost where’d you go? I can’t find you in the body sleeping next to me/ My ghost where’d you go? What happened to the soul that you used to be?”
Tuxedo – R U Ready
Tuxedo have just released the music video from their 2015 track R U Ready and it’s filmed in…. 1981. The story goes that someone found the tape in a goodwill shop in Fresno. In their blurb the band stated:
“Someone just found another VHS of Tuxedo, this time at a Goodwill shop in Fresno. This appears to have been shot in a TV studio on video tape, and is dated 1981. As we know, the band did not get around to recording this track for an LP until 2015.”
We hows that for a coincidence… Regardless of the video’s creepy story, it really has a lot going for it. Among other things it features: a sexy lady in a gold jumpsuit, white tuxedos, lots of rhythmic hip swaying and a main singer who’s so submerged in the groove, his eyes are closed for the majority of the film. Nice.
Favourite youtube comment, “the drummer looks like he’s making a grocery list in his head.”
Alpine – Damn Baby
After the successful release of their latest album Yuck, (which we reviewed here, and mentioned in our top songs of the year so far,) Alpine has delivered a gorgeous new single and accompanying video clip. Damn Baby is everything that a music video should be; simple, effective, and it actually looks like they’re having a great time.
The film is nothing fancy, featuring a plain white background for the majority of the time and various band members dancing around the screen. Unlike most professional movies though, they look like they are genuinely having fun together.
Father John Misty – I Love You Honeybear
Having recently received great praise for his latest album I Love you Honeybear, Father John Misty (Josh Tillman) has just released a music video to go with the album’s namesake. The film is incredible, depicting the artist and his wife Emma, as well as two paramedics/lovers. Both couples are intoxicated in their own way. The paramedics are depicted drinking an entire bottle of whisky, laughing and fooling around in the ambulance van. Tillman and his wife are lying in bed in their beautiful home. The gas main is leaking, and they are slowing being poisoned.
The two journeys meet when the intoxicated paramedics drive to the scene and attempt to rescue the couple, but it is too late. Whether this is because of the paramedic’s state, or if the alcohol was more of a metaphor for their desire to dull the pain of their daily lives away, we do not know.
The film is dark, tense and deeply moving.
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.