Directer Study

Damon Albarn’s music videos for Heavy Seas of Love 2014 and Lonely Press Play 2014 interest me because they are entirely conceptual. He filmed and directed these music videos himself, with editing by Matt Cronin, using his iPad in the different places he visited. I particularly like the way he has superimposed two video clips over the top of each other:

Here Damon has superimposed film of a large red moon and a heptagram against film of waves breaking on a beach. There is no performance or any particular narrative in the two music videos; they are essentially a compilation of footage that appealed to Damon.  I like a lot of other editing techniques that are used in Lonely Press Play such as the mirror effect and the chromatic aberration or refracted light effect:

The genre of these songs is considered to be ‘folktronica’ or ‘trip-hop’ because of the use of electronic sounds and slow tempo. The style of the videos reflect the electronic vibe with the psychedelic visual effects and the slow paced music is complemented by the slow paced editing.

Damon Albarn has influences from a lot of world music. In 2002 Damon produced an album of African music, inspired by an Oxfam trip to Mali, called Mali music and later produced Maison des Jeunes on a returning trip to Mali in 2013. Albarns interest in different cultures from around the world is seen in footage he used in Heavy Seas of Love with a lot of filming seeming to take place in mexico.

The record label which released Heavy Seas of Love and Lonely Press Play on the album Everyday Robots was Parlophone. Who Damon has worked with before with Blur and Gorillaz, so he has had a long relationship with the label. Which means Paraphone were comfortable to let Damon work on the music videos himself. Also he was approached by the label and asked to make a solo album and asked for it to be autobiographical therefore it made sense for Damon to have control over the music videos.

Parlophone has worked with notable artists such as Coldplay and Lily Allen and has given them a lot of say in the production of music videos which shows that it is important for the label to let artists visualise their songs.

Damon’s use of electronic music comes from his work with his band virtual ‘trip-hop’ band, Gorillaz. He co-created the band with Jamie Hewlett who was the illustrator of the band’s characters and music videos. Gorillaz’s electronic music suits their slightly psychedelic cartoon music videos.  I like the use of cartoon images in Gorillaz’s videos, especially the use of cartoon against photographs of streets and buildings in the video for Tomorrow Comes Today.