-Alexa Lempel
The relationship between music and film has always been pretty complicated. Movies use soundtracks to steer emotions, and we who live in the age of MTV and music-videos don’t need to be told that musicians often make use of film as well. And yet it’s not often that one sees collaborations between visual artists and musicians as long-lived, or in my opinion as interesting, as that of filmmaker Danny Perez and the band Animal Collective.
While I’m often of the opinion that music-videos only distract and detract from a piece, Perez’s unique videos match and amplify Animal Collective’s equally distinctive rhythmic/psychedelic style, creating an experience that is truly greater than that of the standalone songs. The team has worked together on several videos and one 53 minute “visual album” called ODDSAC. Below is the video for the song “Summertime Clothes” from Animal Collective’s album Merriweather Post Pavillion.
And in case that embed didn’t work, click on this for an old-fashioned link to Youtube.
This looks rather amateurish to me. reminds me of the “psycheldelic” light shows of the 60’s and 70’s (I was there.)