Daedelus is the father of Icarus. As in flying too close to the sun because he’s a moron Icarus. As in KId Icarus Icarus. Fuck yeah. Remember how you would spend the whole day fighting eggplant wizards and shit and then at the end you finally got the cool mirror shield and the wings that actually work and the cialis-powered arrows and you flew to Medusa’s head and just let loose on her face? I’m pretty sure that everything I learned about sex I learned from Kid Icarus.
Everything I learned about eclectic, trippy, and brooding electronic sounds on the other hand, I learned from Daedelus of the non-Icarus fathering variety. The man behind the plan, Alfred Weisberg Roberts, known to play in bands Adventure Time and The Long Lost, is a fiend when it comes to electronic production. His tracks run the gamut, the serene to the surreal, the brooding to the booty-shaking. Sometimes you get MF DOOM laying down, other times you get haunting melodies that scratch at your very center until you feel unsettled, yet accepting. Sundown, from his latest Denies the Day’s Demise, is of the latter variety.
The video for Sundown , directed by Clay Lipsky, is a densely layered and abstract sojourn into a despondent world. Pitting the environmental against the strctural and tying it together with a ribbon of turn of the century iconography, Lipsky successfully invokes the type of overwhelming, “we have gone too far” tension you get from a Jules Verne novel all while layering it with the sort of hopeful despair that the music itself rests upon.
Accomplishing this all through illustration and computer animation (and a few key performance moments with Daedelus himself) is no small feat. Luckily, the director and I were downing shots of whiskey at that cool bar you don’t know about1 when he let slip the secret to making music videos. I’m not talking some weak tip, like “hey kid, make sure you buy enough film”… Clay gave me the actual equation to music video magic. Quoth Mr. Lipsky:
final cut + photoshop + illustrator + 3D (cinema 4d or MAYA) + After Effects - sleep + coffee = video
So there you have it kids. I expect to see ridiculously good music videos dropkicking me from the sky at a constant and steady rate from this moment on. Except, no, because even with the magic formula you’re not going to do anything except practice those sweet moves you saw on So You Think You Can Dance? last week because it takes a bona-fide madman like Clay to spend the many months required to put that equation to use. And Clay knows it. He knows he can tell somebody the secret and it won’t matter. So that’s why you told me, huh Clay? You’re just toying with me, are you? You know I don’t got the chops? Well fuck you, sir…I need to go practice my dance moves anyway2.
Even though this was kind of dark and twisted, I had a little smile on my face the entire video. It’s very artsy. I like it.
This really seems like the new wave of Music Video. Hundreds of crazy images pasted together and transforming into other images. Put in the band or some live element and use said formula and you have yourself a music video. If you don’t do that just go with stop motion.
ok ok, looking back i oversimplified the formula and forgot the essential “secret sauce”…..the ketchup and thousand island mix in this paricular case is inspiration. without it, you got nothing. for me it is all about the music and the images it conjours up in my head. i did nothing but channel the creative genius of daedelus into visual form. please disregard the bitter, jaded side effects of the formula. i should have read the bottle. the tools have nothing to do with it. a syringe is worthless without the “juice”
best of the best it is,