Harmless Noise
A music blog from Ireland.
A music blog from Ireland.
(No Ratings Yet)Cut flowers make me think of art class and all the great lessons. If you press and pull a finger over oil pastel the resulting smear of colour is very fetching. Following on from its premiere on the Electronic Beats site, this is the ritzy new video for River’s Edge by Last Days of 1984.
With director Sophie Gateau at the helm and Charles Martiny the director of photography, there’s more to the French feel of this work than mere names; the subject matter and style here are characteristic of Impressionism, sharpened up for a new media. I kept thinking about those lines of movement as they squiggled and then disappeared. Clearly finished to a high standard, the sophistication of this video lies in the seemingly ordinary music video content of humans and their machines performing the song, matched to a beautiful simplicity apparent in those vibrant flowers against absolute blankness. The way individual shapes and forms, petals, leaves and stalks fill the dark space is very inviting to look at and changes to the picture are noticed more quickly as the black seeps in. At five minutes long, that simplicity is stretched taut to maintain a state of progression on such basic terms but some mirror work, stop motion and animistic soul-transference keep the eyes gleaming. Those pastel streaks, having done so well to distract us from any real depth of field in the big picture, dissipate at last as River’s Edge peaks, to show the fully-focused perfection of the flowers…only for carnations to transform into roses. And then, like Monet, it’s all a blur again.
As the band continue to work away having just completed a European tour, River’s Edge is the first song from Last Days of 1984 to receive the official video treatment and comes ahead of Wake Up To The Waves, Last Days’ debut album which arrives on 7 May. Released as a taster to introduce the duo Darren Moloney and Brian Rice just under a year ago, River’s Edge and its lilting electronic pop quickly found a favourable reception. They played a string of great shows and signed up for an album with Osaka Records, home to the illuminating sounds of Patrick Kelleher and his Cold Dead Hands, Hunter-Gatherer, The Last Sound and Threadpulls. Readers are likely aware that Sophie Gateau directed the brilliant Miracle Candle for Patrick Kelleher last year.
Wake Up To The Waves is released next month but the LP can be pre-ordered from Osaka now. The full tracklist follows.
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