The Best Of SXSW In This Week’s Holy Hunter Of Music Videos
It’s that time of year again, and the SXSW music video lineup has reared its prepossessing red head. I’ll assume routine position as the moribund medium’s cheerleader with quite a dynamic batch of favorites to share.
Tokyo-based director Hiro Murai himself is indisputably as fascinating as the imagery he hatches. Specifically, one part Takeshi Kitano and another David Lynch if you ask him what he’s made of. Most recently he’s teamed up with Australian producer Chet Faker for his soulful, slow-burn brooding single, “Gold” and holy mother of sultry quad(s) roller skating. The stunning, scantily clad women in this video are at once athletically and genetically impressive, so gawking is encouraged (and unavoidable). If you’ve attempted the sport post-adolescence, viewing the arduous choreography alone is enough to make your jaw dislocate. I just felt like a giant paper doll with fresh banana peels for feet - i.e. very sexy.
However hyperbolically specific, I’m just going to say that a chain-smoking Auslan fluent sous chef matador with cotton candy-colored fur is my spirit animal. Co-director Darcy Prendergast even spent hours in the Sharp FX chair to don the monster suit and breathe life into this creature, which is an admirable, albeit mad undertaking when you consider the temperature on shooting day, a colossal one-hundred degree armpit. In tandem with co-director Andrew Goldsmith, they’ve assembled a brief, heartrending narrative perfectly set to Travis Auslebrook’s equally blue single, “Frameless.”
With a greater picture in mind, singer-songwriters Jack Kovacs and Huxlee re-recorded their melancholy duet to provide a more cinematic score for writer-director Anna Zlokovic’s anomalous vision, culminating in a truly macabre tale of a relationship’s demise. The couple’s exchange of free-flowing, pitch-black wormy death syrup (™) illustrates infectious inner to outer demons as they devour each other and their environment whole. This is the pinnacle of body horror romance (ho-ro?).
