LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 29: Thom Yorke performs onstage at The Greek Theatre on October ... [+]
Thom Yorke dropped his third solo LP, ANIMA, back in June — and one of the album cuts, “Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain),” just got a music video.
Directed by Art Camp & Saad Moosajee, the five-minute clip centers on an astronaut aimlessly pacing through a city filled with floating cars, faceless passersby, and burning buildings. These black-and-white vignettes culminate in a stampede of silhouetted figures outrunning a fire. The monochrome aesthetic of the flickering animation is reminiscent of the side-scroller game, Limbo.
Composed of 3,000 hand-illustrated frames, the visual employs a slew of animation techniques: 16mm film, 3D, and cel animation. However, the Brooklyn-based studio also experimented with clay sculpture, charcoal dust, and abstract expression during the making of the clip.
“Our first and last goal was to serve the feelings of the song and the record,” Art Camp said in a statement. “Thom shared a list of visions with us, disconnected images from his dreams, and we expanded on it with visions from everyone who joined the video team, over a dozen of us. At its core, our intention was to communicate the experience of feeling completely on your own, surrounded by people you see yourself in but don’t understand, who have lost their minds to the city and can’t see that you need their help.”
The dream state is a thematic centerpiece on the album. Yorke has previously spoken about the importance of sleep in an interview with Stephen Colbert. “I’ve been reading a book called Why We Sleep, and I find it fascinating that dreams are an important part about how we relate to other people, how we relate to society, how we process the things that happen to us. And if we don’t dream, we don’t connect to people correctly,” he said. “Dreams are important fundamentally to how we live as human beings. I don’t know, I just got really into it while I was making the record.”
He teased the LP by placing mysterious advertisements for ANIMA Technologies around London, Milan, and Dallas. “Here at Anima we’ve built something we call a Dream Camera,” one of the ads stated. “Just call or text the number and we’ll get your dreams back.”
“Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain)” marks the first ANIMA-related clip to surface since Paul Thomas Anderson’s short film hit Netflix.
The Radiohead frontman recently debuted his new ballad, “Daily Battles,” at his Los Angeles show on Oct. 29. The track, which features Atoms for Peace bandmate Flea, soundtracks Edward Norton’s film Motherless Brooklyn. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the actor-director touched on how the composition fits the 1950s-set drama. “It rises organically out of the story of the film and it gives you shivers, it’s really a special thing when that happens,” he said.
Yorke just extended his tour into 2020 with shows across North America and Europe.
Watch the music video for “Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain)” below.
