The Music Video Mini-List

[zedz]

I don't know which Chris Cunningham...

This one

Come to Daddy
A great one to watch just before bedtime.

[swo17]

Oh hey, and don't forget Rubber Johnny

[domino harvey]

Some favorites that will make my list:

Glasser Shape The only music video that will also be appearing on my Horror List Redux ballot. I've always found something vaguely unsettling about Mind's Eye/Lawnmower Man-era CGI. This video, conceived by visual artist Jonathan Turner, uses that apprehension as a motif, as the unnerving Capri Sun ad artifice of CGI becomes an unstoppable force of menace and usurpation of the "actual" 3-D world.

Peter Gabriel Steam All of Gabriel's music videos from this album are CGI-heavy, which is not surprising from a forward-thinking vet like Gabriel, but this is easily the best of the trio of singles, a comic smorgasbord of Playboy Party Jokes come to life in bizarre hyper-reality. The video's use of CGI to not replicate reality but instead heighten the unreal with puckish weirdness is a peek at a cartoon sensibility for the method that never really came to fruition after T2 expanded the possibilities (and the playful artifice of the graphics here are clearly a choice). It makes me laugh that YouTube has age-restricted this since I used to see this on VH1 at like 7AM all the time. The sexism is so plentiful and free-flowing from both sides that only a fool could get offended, especially since nothing here rises above playground snickering.

Clairo Pretty Girl Authenticity is a joke, but an awful lot of people sure value it. I find this video, made for nothing by the artist in her own bedroom, fascinating: it went viral (currently sitting at well over 40 million views) and took Claire Contrill from a bedroom pop artist with a 100 plays a month on Bandcamp to a record contract and sold out shows. Like LDR, Contrill has industry ins (her dad's in the biz), and the whole thing, right down to the self-important description, is brilliantly contrived to maximize impact... and as a video, it doesn't matter because it works: how better to encapsulate bedroom pop than to film yourself lip syncing to your own song in your bedroom?

Homeshake Every Single Thing I dare you to find a better use of 2:49 than watching these two Taiwanese dancers execute in one take a couple's dance as the sun is just going down and a dog perfectly hits his mark. It's the scrappiness of everything we see, from the moment the camera is in the wrong position to the fumbled paired moves, that makes this, though: it becomes endearing, and I would probably watch this again over repeating any other video I'm voting for because stuff like this is why life's worth living.

Lele Pons Celoso I already wrote like a thousand words on this, which was met with polite silence. Fuck y'all, this is pretty much my platonic ideal for a music video. I voted this as one of the best films of last year for a reason.

[domino harvey]

And YT just reminded me in the sidebar of one of those videos how awesome the video for Chairlift's Amanaemonesia is, so good call algorithm

[Big Ben]

Man that Peter Gabriel video for Steam reminds me a lot of the stuff I saw on Adult Swim in the mid 2000's to the first part of the 2010's. It's something. I'm surprised it hasn't been heavily mined for GIF usage.

[thirtyframesasecond]

A few more gems from the 80s:

Genius of Love (Tom Tom Club) - Animated in the style of a child's colorful drawings, this video alternates between literal interpretations of the lyrics and more imaginative associations. Like the song, it's delightfully upbeat yet occasionally tacky. And it constantly moves, never holding a static image, with objects and characters squiggling in and out of existence or shape-shifting into something else.

Don't You Want Me (The Human League) - A mysterious brunette. A blonde. A murder. A film set. The video eerily anticipates Mulholland Drive while exploring the obsessive relationship of the song. Is the guy exercising his revenge fantasy through the violence of the scripted film? What's real and what's fake? It all culminates with the camera pulling back on the real crew's reflection.

Slave to the Rhythm (Grace Jones) (NSFW) - Composed entirely of recycled clips from previous Jones videos and even commercials in which she appeared, this is perhaps the best distillation of her warped and perverse aesthetic. When Ian McShane's (!) opening narration announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Grace Jones," that's exactly what you're getting -- five minutes of high fashion, kinky sex, and flights of surrealism as only the defiant Miss Jones can deliver.

DYWM was a relatively early Steve Barron - went on to do Take On Me/Billie Jean of course (and Africa by Toto!!!). And STTR was probably the high point of the ZTT label.

[BenoitRouilly]

There's more Gondry of course. Somebody will have posted 'Let Forever Be', and I think I've posted a half dozen others, but not The White Stripes' 'The Hardest Button to Button', a human pixellation tour-de-force.
The Hardest Button to Button
This is another one where the visuals match the music to a tee, and the execution is meticulously OCD, even though the result has a rough, improvisatory veneer - which is sort of the Gondry aesthetic in a nutshell.

This is one of my favourite as well!

I don't know which Chris Cunningham...

This one

This one is radically hardcore... too violent for me. Still formally interesting though.
But I like the outlandishness of this one :

Come to Daddy
A great one to watch just before bedtime.

And I had forgotten about this one I like very much (I didn't think of it as a music video per say):

Oh hey, and don't forget Rubber Johnny

[colinr0380]

The other (slightly) less disturbing side of Chris Cunningham is the technological one. My favourite video is still the one he did for Bjork: All Is Full Of Love. That was one of the five highlight videos I sent to domino, but I'll get to the other four later on this evening. Compared to his other technological videos being about the glitches and whines of the electronic music as much as the technology (as with the earlier Second Bad Vilbel, which I have just learned was re-edited for the Palm Pictures DVD edition), this is all clean surfaces, freshly welded synaptic connections and flowing lubricants growing out of the murky hentai-esque dark tangle of cabling beneath the Apple Store whiteness!

(I also love Come On My Selector, as anything that manages to reference Akira (aurally through the television) and Re-Animator (visually with the figure) even before the song starts is already hitting the right notes! It is enough to overlook the slight strangeness of a hospital for mentally insane children also containing a high tech brain swapping machine! That was just asking for mischievous hands to put it to some nefarious use!)

[brundlefly]

Hard to believe it took seven pages before someone mentioned "Come to Daddy." Maybe it just needed to be properly October. Wonder if “Bachelorette” hasn’t been added to the Gondry pile yet because it’s too Kaufmanesque.

I assume that since “a commercial scored by one song” is not eligible, Spike Jonze’s Kenzo ad featuring “Mutant Brain” by Sam Spiegel & Ape Drums with Assassin is knocked out. A way to winnow down the Jonze list – that LCD SS “Drunk Girls” video is amazing – but still a shame.

It may not be top-tier Jackson, but I’ve always felt “Scream” gets overlooked because it was a single from a greatest hits package. Mark Romanek’s video comes with asterisks – the unnecessary classification titles, the infatuation with morphing technology – but it’s gorgeous, it comes together everywhere it should, alleviates its more overbearing aspects with glimpses of genuine playfulness. And it brings Janet into this conversation.

In a different budgetary dimension, Battles’ “Atlas” (d. Timothy Saccenti) takes place in a set built by the band. Heads down, hard at work, the only engine you need.

To the Beyoncé pile – there’s a Beyoncé pile, right? – I’d like to make a case for “Countdown” (d. Beyoncé and Adria Petty). Its split and faux-split screens, its stop-motion and sped-up action, its aggressive, exhausting sense of fun. Hard at work, the only engine you need.

And for the same reason Armageddon has a spine number, it feels like someone should mention Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” So: Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (d. Russel Mulcahy).

Azealia Banks ft. Lazy Jay - 212 - I watched this over and over and over when it came out. A very charismatic presence, though I understand she's kind of thrown her career down the toilet since then by being an outspoken idiot.

This song, man. As much as it’s the stand-out, I love all of Broke with Expensive Taste. When it was announced RZA was directing her in a feature, I’d hoped it would be that album as a full-on weirdo ‘Wall’-type musical about a hip-hop kid finding/losing herself in a rave. Instead it was the dismissibly dull-looking Love Beats Rhymes. A shame she’s mostly known for being a toxic social media presence, now, but talented people have done far more horrid things and held on to their careers. “212” is mostly her and a brick wall, and some people are so compulsively watchable that that’s enough.

To that end: “The Rain” may be the ultimate Hype Williams video, but I find Busta Rhymes’ “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” as undeniable as five minutes of mugging into a fish-eye lens can be.

Two videos from last year engage directly with the impact of gun violence on the black community. One of these is also certainly the most talked about video of recent memory, Childish Gambino's This is America. Depicting two shootings with unflinching bluntness, the video is mesmerizing, filled with symbolism that has led to various interpretations and choreography seemingly designed to distract us from the violence surrounding it. Taking a different approach, the video for Prince's Mary Don't You Weep focuses on the aftermath of a shooting, showing the loss and mourning of the victim's family as his spirit watches helplessly from the sidelines. I was familiar with This Is America since it's premiere, but the (posthumous) Prince video was new to me. They definitely make interesting companion pieces.

Another Hiro Murai video should make my list and fits neatly with these: “Never Catch Me” by Flying Lotus feat. Kendrick Lamar. Also: Colin Tilley’s video for Lamar’s “Alright.”

Some peculiar personal favorites:

Shiina Ringo, “Meisai” (d. Shuichi Banba). Her record company scrubs her vids from YouTube pretty well, so forgive the resolution and the sub/supertitles. This may be the least interesting track from her best album, a mere b-side, but it merits this opulent ghost banquet with doubles and substitutes and a lot of back-and-forth. Neko Saito’s steak is so tough it forces him to play air violin.

TemiDollFace, “Pata Pata” (d. James Slater). Music videos can be art, but they’re always advertising. Pitching fifty products to help you leave your lover, Ms. DollFace (whose output has been a trickle of singles, most thankfully with videos) uses style and charm to sell you the latest craze, her own. Dance away your wahala.

When I think of fan videos, I tend to think of something like Gabe Askew’s for Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks.” So much work there! You’d have to be a fan.

But instead – and destined to be an orphan pick – I vote for Steve Kardynal’s Chatroulette Version of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.” (NSFW?) Easy to be cynical: It’s one joke – a guy in a bikini, har har – and the creator dedicates half the screen to people enjoying his work. It’s neither the first time nor the most elaborate time he’s done the same thing! But this is perfect juncture of song and medium, call and response. While Jepsen bounces and hedges her dedication to instant attraction, Kardynal shocks a series of swipe-left strangers to stop mid-fap and sing along. This is the haphazard nature of connection on the internet and the deep, unifying, three-minute relationship we have with a piece of great pop music.

[colinr0380]

It may not be top-tier Jackson, but I’ve always felt “Scream” gets overlooked because it was a single from a greatest hits package. Mark Romanek’s video comes with asterisks – the unnecessary classification titles, the infatuation with morphing technology – but it’s gorgeous, it comes together everywhere it should, alleviates its more overbearing aspects with glimpses of genuine playfulness. And it brings Janet into this conversation.

And Romanek later did a full on Janet Jackson video with her take on Got Til It's Gone

[sinemadelisikiz]

To that end: “The Rain” may be the ultimate Hype Williams video, but I find Busta Rhymes’ “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” as undeniable as five minutes of mugging into a fish-eye lens can be.

I was wondering when Busta Rhymes' videos would get a mention. His image as the weirdo-in-the-room fits really well with the Hype Williams style, and the videos for Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See and Gimme Some More have always been iconic, kinetic late 90s day-glo masterpieces to me. One of those will be on my list, but I'm still mulling over which if anyone wants to form a Busta pact!
I've been making a mental list of current favorites to add to this list but just haven't been able to flesh it out, so here's a dump of a few:
Vic Mensa "Down on My Luck" - A fun variant of the Groundhog day conceit that's just about having the best night out clubbing. This one gets ridiculous, but it clearly doesn't take itself very seriously.
Cashmere Cat "Wedding Bells" - Trailer-style video condensing a relationship to a highlight reel. Probably not the only one of it's kind, but it fits the vibe of the song well IMO
Camille "Ta Douleur" - What if yarn, but evil?
That's all for now. I'll add more later when I'm not at work

[colinr0380]

These are not my highlights yet (I might save them until Saturday) but on a cold Autumn night how about a Cardigan or two?

I've always loved the video for Erase/Rewind by The Cardigans, ever since it turned up as an extra feature on the DVD of The Thirteenth Floor, the 1999 US remake of Fassbinder's World on a Wire. I really like the way that the clips from the film are interspersed throughout the video, though that does turn it into a complete spoiler for the film, including of the coda final shot of the level lying 'above' the modern world!

The official video on the group's Vevo channel has removed all of the Thirteenth Floor footage and still works OK, but works even better in the version with the footage from the film (especially the brief sync with the lightning strike on the skyscraper near the end).

Since the quality on the version I prefer is not that great I decided to do a multi-screen comparison between the two videos. The official one is on the left, and the audio is coming only from that one, whilst the lower quality one with the film footage is playing on the right. The righthand video is about a second or two lagging behind, but that might allow for a better comparison between one and the other! Let me know if this does not work as I'm experimenting with doing this! If the buttons beneath the videos do not work refresh the page until the blue box saying "Pre-loading videos" comes up, and that should mean they are ready to play. I think sometimes one video buffers and starts playing before the other one is ready, in which case press the back button on the shared buttons underneath the YouTube videos and then that shared play button and it should work.

As an additional note, there is a third, much bleaker, variant of the video out there, which was briefly on YouTube but has disappeared now, which is the same content as in the "Official Video" but the band get crushed in the shrinking room at the end instead of the door opening!

[thirtyframesasecond]

I liked the Jonas Akerlund vid for My Favourite Game.....well the uncensored one anyway! The Cardigans were a pretty fey Belle and Sebastian-esque group, obviously hit pay dirt with Love Fool, but then developed some edge. Did some decent vids for Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins (though the Dayton/Faris vids for Tonight, Tonight/1979 are iconic!), The Prodigy, etc.

Romanek obviously did some great stuff with NIN - Closer, The Perfect Drug. Rain by Madonna was another good vid, and obviously Fiona Apple's Criminal. Cochise by Audioslave was also a cracker, and he starting by directing Sweet Bird of Truth by The The.....which takes me into Tim Pope, who's most famous for his work for The Cure (Close To Me, anyone?), but also made vids for The The and Talk Talk (Life's What You Make It?)

Stephane Sednaoui is another of the great 90s music video directors - great work for U2, Tricky, Bjork, RHCP, etc.

And you can't forget Anton Corbijn - Dr Mabuse (Propaganda), Red Guitar (David Sylvian), Seven Seas (Echo and the Bunnymen), and obviously his U2/Depeche Mode work.

[The Narrator Returns]

Since I think every other Directors Label director has been mentioned so far, I'll discuss Jonathan Glazer and specifically his video for Nick Cave's "Into My Arms". Cave has said he doesn't like the video because it's working in opposition to the song's hopeful tone, but I think it's a really powerful piece of work on its own (especially the director's cut with an extended tragic striptease), and it makes the case along with Birth for Glazer being one of our best close-up directors.

[The Narrator Returns]

And my pick for the best Chris Cunningham is "Afrika Shox", which is the best study of post-9/11 New York paranoia that happened to be released three years before 9/11 happened. Great, oppressively dark Darius Khondji cinematography as well, a look which, from trailers, Khondji seems to have channeled in Uncut Gems.

[colinr0380]

I liked the Jonas Akerlund vid for My Favourite Game.....well the uncensored one anyway! The Cardigans were a pretty fey Belle and Sebastian-esque group, obviously hit pay dirt with Love Fool, but then developed some edge. Did some decent vids for Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins (though the Dayton/Faris vids for Tonight, Tonight/1979 are iconic!), The Prodigy, etc.

I was going to mention My Favourite Game as the other great Cardigans video. Didn't it beat Tarantino to the Death Proof dangerous driving gimmick by a few years?

Akerlund seemed to have a knack for some of the most controversial videos, probably reaching its height with that incredibly NSFW Prodigy video Smack My Bitch Up.

Since I think every other Directors Label director has been mentioned so far, I'll discuss Jonathan Glazer and specifically his video for Nick Cave's "Into My Arms". Cave has said he doesn't like the video because it's working in opposition to the song's hopeful tone, but I think it's a really powerful piece of work on its own (especially the director's cut with an extended tragic striptease), and it makes the case along with Birth for Glazer being one of our best close-up directors.

The other great close up video is probably Sinéad O'Connor's singing of Nothing Compares 2 U. Directed by John Maybury who would later make Love Is The Devil, The Jacket and The Edge of Love. He also directed the video for West End Girls by The Pet Shop Boys.

[thirtyframesasecond]

The other great close up video is probably Sinéad O'Connor's singing of Nothing Compares 2 U. Directed by John Maybury who would later make Love Is The Devil, The Jacket and The Edge of Love. He also directed the video for West End Girls by The Pet Shop Boys.

Maybury started out working on the films of Derek Jarman, who himself made some good pop videos.

Dance Hall Days for Wang Chung - https://imvdb.com/video/wang-chung/dance-hall-days

It's a Sin by the Pet Shop Boys - https://imvdb.com/video/pet-shop-boys/its-a-sin

The Queen is Dead by the Smiths - https://imvdb.com/video/the-smiths/the-queen-is-dead

Speaking of PSB, my favourite music video of theirs is for Domino Dancing, partly because the love triangle between two shirtless fellas and the woman who's the object of their affections, unravels quickly at the end!!! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik2YF05iX2w

[Lowry_Sam]

I just happened to drop in after avoiding this board, as it usually involves a major time commitment, but couldn’t resist this list project. As a teen with cable television, music videos were a big thing, as access to movies was limited until vhs & living in the NJ area, was able to follow MTV (and all the late night/weekend video programming, especially Night Flight). Before MTV local stations had their own video shows which could be quite random. When MTV first started it too was quite random, but towards the end of the 80s, it began to segment music into slot times (like Yo! MTV Raps & 120 Minutes). It also created VH1 for the adults, playing a lot of New Age, popular jazz, soft pop/rock hits. VH1 was initially seen as lame by kids, but would play some odd things that MTV shunned as it became more commercial. As MTV became less music oriented, all music shifted to VH1.

Trying to catch up on some old faves on YouTube, but notice many from the early days are missing (particularly The Lords Of The New Church’s cover of Madonna’s Like A Virgin, which has completely disappeared from the net). MTV is largely responsible for The British Invasion of the 80s, as few American artists had videos & MTV needed to fill up time, so MTV played many artists which only received radio AirPlay on college radio stations (Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, Madness, The Specials, Ultravox...), But as more homes in the US got cable & more US artists started making videos, MTV became less adventurous during its daytime programming & would only air the odder stuff late at night. To see more adventurous stuff you would either have to live in a big city w/ good local stations or good cable station selections like USA Network ( which carried Night Flight, which aired all kinds of random stuff from cult movies to experimental videos & was my favorite program as a teen) or A&E. You could also see rarer videos in clubs, who had their own video service that often played the controversial videos (ie. Duran Duran’s original Girls On Film, FGTH’s original Relax) or extended dance versions (ie. Pet Shop Boys Domino Dancing that would never be played on regular tv video programs.

I don't know which Chris Cunningham...

This one

Come to Daddy
A great one to watch just before bedtime.

Going through the thread, I was just going to comment on all the love for Jonze & Gondry, but not Cunningham who made my 2 favorites from the 90s & possibly all time, (Come To Daddy would probably be #3 of his): [Warning NSFW For both]
Aphex Twin Windowlicker
Bjork All Is Full Of Love

Also surprised to see no actual discussion of OKGO videos, really hard to just pick one (despite not caring for their music).

And before anyone else name drops another Annie Lennox/Eurythmics video, I must say that while I have nostalgia for Sweet Dreams,the severely neglected Beethoven (I Love To Listen To) will get highest placing on my list.

[colinr0380]

On Annie Lennox/Eurythmics I really like Sexcrime and Julia that were around the 1984 soundtrack, but already talked about it here.

I'm not too familiar with OK Go outside of Here It Goes Again (The Treadmill Video), but I presume that is the one that everyone is circling around without naming outright!

How about that small subgenre of music videos that appeared as extra features on German films starring Franka Potente that were released on DVD by Columbia Tri-Star back in the day? Here's Potente singing Believe from the Run Lola Run soundtrack (sadly not in great quality) that kind of furthers Lola's fractious relationship with her father further than in the film itself. Even better is the music video for plastination horror film Anatomy a couple of years later performed by co-star Anna Loos, My Truth, which melds S&M black PVC gear and sterile medical imagery in a strange manner, with her character's in-film sexy dance on the autopsy table providing the central image, which kind of works as a nice re-foregrounding of her otherwise expendable supporting victim character!

Even more amusingly the year after Anatomy both Potente and Benno Fürmann, who have let's say an antagonistic relationship in that film, teamed up again as lovers in Tom Tykwer's follow up to Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior. Which again has a nice music video, to You Can't Find Peace by Pale3 and Skin from Skunk Anansie.

[Lowry_Sam]

The Treadmill video was a hit because of its simplicity & it was their first, but The One Moment is such an impressive technical feat & I think the song is better too.

Since someone mentioned Total Eclipse Of The Heart, which was probably my most hated song of the 80s after Eye Of The Tiger, I actually developed an appreciation for it through the literal version craze of the early YouTube days:
Total Eclipse Of The Heart (Literal Version)

[kuzine]

Freefall mini theme:
Laid Back - Baker Man (by LvT, but I only found out a few years ago, doesn't show his usual tropes )
Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy
I guess for the latter the backstory of the footage used in the initial minutes fascinates me more than the video itself.

This is historic footage of Col Joe Kittinger's (USAF) record setting parachute jump from space during Project Excelsior, a program to establish very high altitude emergency bailout procedures for astronauts. This was 1960, the altitude- 102,800'! (about 19 miles high). He free fell for 4 1/2 minutes! down to 18,000' where he deployed his chute. He was the fastest man alive without propulsion at 614 mph!/quote]

[Lowry_Sam]

Some early 80s faves:

Hunters & Collectors got only occasional airplay on college radio in the US, but MTV played some of their videos, the best of which were Talking To A Stranger and The Slab.

The Stranglers ‘ video for Golden Brown, while not monumental, was rather ubiquitous on all the video programs. Unfortunately YouTube seems to have deleted Nuclear Device.

One of the original videos shot driving around city streets in a car: The Specials Ghost Town

The one video that MTV would actually play in the US, but was banned in the UK: The Police’s Invisible Sun

All of The Cramps videos seem to have been removed & replaced with live versions except for Bikini Girls With Machine Guns which is still pretty good.

In addition to the most unlikely hit whip It (given MTVs censorship in later years), Devo also had Freedom Of Choice and Jocko Homo

The Flying Lizards’ cover of Sex Machine I think is a more interesting video than Money, even though the latter is a better song.

And I would be remiss to not mention the most unlikely video to turn an alternative/college rock band into pop icons, Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime.

David Van Tieghem, percussionist for Laurie Anderson & others, had a bit of a club hit with These Things Happen & is chock full of movie samples, which is why I assume the album,despite getting released on Warner Brothers, never got upgraded to CD & is now more obscure than Eno’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

Another obscurity that got regular airplay on VH1 & the clubs, but never made it to CD is Chas Jankel’s (formerly of Ian Dury & The Blockheads) Questionnaire.

[colinr0380]

Sorry it took a while to get my highlight videos back in order. These are the other four that I had sent to domino (All Is Full of Love is talked about above):

First is On by Aphex Twin, a wonderful beach-set stop-motion collage and collision of objects in a piece directed by Jarvis Cocker. There have been great Aphex Twin videos since then, up to the recent seeming paen to self-aware Google Map data T69 Collapse but On already captures a lot of the wonderful synaesthesic, free flowing dreamlike imagery aspect going on in these pieces.
___

Next is Acid Rain by Lorn. This is a wonderfully disturbing and strangely touching video of a cheerleader's impromptu last dance. I have brought it up on the forum before but wanted to again here in the official thread. Many of the Lorn music videos tend towards the dark and suicidally and self-destructively bleak, so perhaps a warning for that is in order, but in addition to Acid Rain I wanted to take an opportunity to mention the astonishingly dark willing techno-dissolution of Anvil, which I have my suspicions is a homage to Nine Inch Nails' notorious, much banned and again very NSFW messier industrial processing cycle of Happiness In Slavery that starred Bob Flanagan. If it is not it is working in exactly the same territory (plus I like the face explosion, which like any good 80s kid reminds me of the life force meter in Knightmare!).

The other great Lorn video that I have come across is a similarly bleakly dark boundary pusher: a psychically linked racer's pursuit of a new track record leads to inevitably blowing a few crucial gaskets in Sega Sunset, which is a repurposed scene from the criminally overlooked anime anthology film Neo Tokyo. So I'm not entirely sure if it counts for this project, but the way the music highlights the bleak beauty of the violent images is wonderfully done.
___

Following that is Gosh by Jamie_xx just for throwing a barrage of strangely mind bending themes at an audience that are as matter of fact as a replica of the Eiffel Tower being constructed somewhere in China (and acting as some kind of metaphysical antenna that requires albino people to power it?)
__

And the fourth highlight is Wide Open by the Chemical Brothers with vocals by Beck. This is the current renaissance of Chemical Brothers music videos - I like the more overtly pro-robot uprising toned Free Yourself too, but Wide Open dares to present a single shot dance piece with the dancer (played by Sonoya Mizuno just after she was in Ex Machina) disappearing as her body parts get CGI-replaced over time. Watch out for the mirror image, making the dance we are watching seem almost like it is a mind's eye pre-visualisation of a fully fleshed out performance to come!
___

Plus, since All Is Full of Love is already talked about, I'll instead throw in a few great videos from the Shynola collective, a group of videomakers that the Channel 4 Mirrorball series highlighted back in the late 90s, who did a lot of work with animation with one of their best previous videos being I Changed My Mind by Lyrics Born. I also really like their now old style (though I think it was cutting edge at the time it was made!) PS2 videogame inflected video for On The Double by Grooverider and Cypress Hill, as well as Flying High by Morgan (which I'm sure I have seen the premise for used since in holiday adverts, albeit without the bursting into flames part!).

Since that time they made videos for Radiohead (Pyramid Song), Coldplay (the stunning chalked floors of Strawberry Swing), Emiliana Torrini (Tookah) and Hot Chip (the Triangle-styled loops of Need You Now), among many others. Need You Now appears to be homaging a few of the images from the wonderful Chemical Brothers video The Test.

I'm pretty sure that if that Director's Series had continued they would have gotten to Shynola at some point. They also did the title sequence for Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (and title design for the recent Mandy) and the animations in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I see that Shynola also did the credits to the IT Crowd and the Junior Senior 'Move Your Feet' video (which makes sense). They also did the QOTSA video for 'Go With The Flow' which was neat!

Hot Chip also have some pretty good videos - tbf, I've not mad on the Peter Serafinowicz videos for 'I Feel Better' (which is sad as I love the track) or 'Night and Day' (though it does have Terence Stamp in it!!!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCZN2N6Q_I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxg2JbWA7Nk

'Hungry Child' from their last album has Martin Starr from Freaks and Geeks and features an arguing couple who constantly hear the song pounding in their heads! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOnMZALLQPk

'Over and Over' breaks down the whole green screen setup - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDJKgi2e-Aw

Hammer and Tongs did the video for 'Boy From School' - love the video and track - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK2CuSQHNMs

But the video I enjoy most is 'Playboy' from their debut album Coming on Strong - it's simple and is just goofing around, plus I love the lyrics of some dude cruising round Putney in his Peugeot dreaming of a hip-hop lifestyle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mATrenootCA

[domino harvey]

The Treadmill video was a hit because of its simplicity & it was their first, but The One Moment is such an impressive technical feat & I think the song is better too.

Not that I want the title of OK Go Historian ever, but their first viral hit was actually their dance to A Million Ways, which is also quite accomplished in terms of synchronized movement (albeit not nearly as impressive as the 4 person choreography on moving treadmills in Here It Goes Again). The band members are incredibly creative in seemingly every field but their chosen profession