Despite the Converse product shots, this latest BRTHR blast is closer to Requiem For A Dream than any sneaker commercial as we delve deep into a dark, trippy underworld.
If the song reminds you of Michael Jackson, then maybe the video will strike a "Smooth Criminal" chord, but only if you amp up the madness, the violence, the sex and the style. "In The Night" is a complex and nightmarish blast from the brains of BRTHR that's an homage to the past, but a decided step forward into the future.
You can always pretend you're under the sea, even if you're in a sunny landlocked front lawn, or in the gloomy Atlantis Club. So it goes in BRTHR's thematically tight, yet nicely woozy video for The Drums.
Taking perhaps the worst curse word out there and turning it into a symbol of power — that's the underlying theme behind this clip from Hercules and Love Affair and director Matt Lambert, who blur the lines between music video and documentary much like the way the NYC gay nightlife icons featured here blur the lines between taboo and acceptance. Paris, it seems, has never stopped burning.
Andy Butler, Hercules & Love Affair: "My initial idea was to conceptualise the song through a series of filmed interviews with performance artists who explore profanity and gender in their work but I was not aiming at the fusion of music, video and documentary. When I talked to Matt for the first time he mentioned the idea of combining the two formats - music video and documentary. Fast forward 6 months to when I previewed the early edits and it kind of blew my mind"
Matt Lambert, director: "I spoke to some of the people who appear in the video for over an hour. Each of them had a different answer and different relationship to the word 'cunt' as well as the appropriation and reclamation of profane language as a means of pushing culture forward. Language, especially when dealing with issues surrounding identity, defines people's realities whether they choose to embrace or ignore language.”
"Coming Of Age" plays like a soundtrack video to a long lost '80s movie, where we see that everybody needs to stand up and fight, be it a boxer in the ring or the nerdy school mascot.
Believe it or not, this Ms Mr video is one of the least weird things you'd encounter on Brooklyn's public access network, BCAT. That said, this latest visual treat directed by BRTHR is still abundantly strange. Ms Mr gives a retro-styled performance as a young viewer gets increasingly hypnotized and subsumed by what he sees on-screen, until he essentially becomes one with the TV.