Between dance performance and a passing parade – The Chemical Brothers‘ new clip »Go« filmed by the legendary director Michel Gondry, who has proved himself a master of the surrealist arts, is incredibly brilliant, as was to be expected. The clip features seven dancers, all dressed in the same grey working out various routines in front of a deserted apartment block.
Stereogum writes: »Arca’s new video for ‚Thievery‘ is an astounding piece of work, and it effectively does for twerking what Aphex Twin’s ‚Windowlicker‘ did for late-’90s rap-video excess.« And for sure, this clip is owing to a kind of irritation. Check it out below.
Soweto’s most flashy dancers. Shangaan Electro is the street level dance phenomenon from South Africa that went global in 2010. DAZED presents a film by Rohan Blair-Mangat.
Flying Lotus released his brilliant »Until The Quiet Comes« album almost two years ago, but the material is still as good as ever in 2014. Now FlyLo released a visual for the Laura Darlington-featured »Phantasm« directed by Markus Hofko.
Toronto’s Egyptrixx aka David Psutka has been busy with various studio production projects as well as recording and touring with his side-project Hiawatha. His return as Egyptrixx takes the form of a multi-media collaboration with Berlin-based visual artist A N F – Andreas Nicolas Fischer, who created a visual counterpart to the tracks that make up new album »A/B til Infinity«. In the video for Ax//s, Psutka’s relentless, repetitive techno is the hellish complement to Fischer’s boundless, molten planet.
5. Is Tropical – »Dancing Anymore« directed by Megaforce (riffraff films). The future of teenager fantasy films may based on this clip. This is the story of a poolboy on the verge of puberty. His daily work slows down due to an unexpected thought with curious details. The dramatic climax reaches into a great scene: the boy gets a blowjob off a corpse in the middle of a warzone. Banned from YouTube just 25 minutes after airing. Definitely the freak out of the year.
4. Bonobo– »Cirrus« directed by Cyriak. The music video by New York-based producer Bonobo is animated in a most fantastic way, all of it layered into a kaleidoscope of pretty colors and vintage footage, with source material from the public domain video treasure trove, The Prelinger Archive. What starts out as a few simple repeating elements soon becomes a chaotic collage of video snippets that take on a life of their own.
3. Gesaffelstein– »Pursuit« directed by Fleur & Manu. This video is incredible, a rectangular array of symbols and arrangements, evil, and violently sexy. The camera is constantly backing away from a series of strange surroundings. A masterpiece of a music video. The concept behind the video in the director’s own words: »It is a trip through the quest for power, showing the bad aspects of it. Power, money, success should never be the goal otherwise you lose your soul.«
2. Jon Hopkins – »Open Eye Signal« directed by Aoife McArdle. The colors, the light, the depth of field and above all, the setting. Absolut fantastic. And additionally one of the best tracks of 2013. Directer McArdle describes it this way: »The track is really special. I saw it as a singular, hypnotic journey that’s almost endless. You get lost in it. I liked the idea of a city kid taking us on that journey… just one day suddenly deciding to escape his life and see more of the world in the only way he understands… via skateboard.«
1. Jon Rafman + Oneohtrix Point Never – »Still Life (Betamale)« directed by Jon Rafman. Filthy keyboards, digital pack rat interiors, fetish anime art and 8-bit video game graphics embedded in a loopy realness – the digital lifestyle of Jon Rafman’s »Still Life (Betamale)« collage is breathtaking, or as Brandon Soderberg said: »This collage of a clip invokes awe, empathy, sadness, and horror all at once, or one after another or who even knows, could receive, right?«. The world is a strange place. Even the digital world. A worthy winner in a tight contest!