Welcome to FACT’s newest feature: the weekly video round-up.
As we note at the end of every year, music videos have never been better. But too often, music videos — along with documentaries, live sets and interview clips — get lost in the shuffle of news and new music.
With that in mind, FACT is doing what it does for mixes, mixtapes, vinyl and more: rounding up the internet’s best videos on a weekly basis. And to remove our bias, we won’t be including our own content — you’ll have to stay tuned to FACT TV for all your Against The Clock, FACT Freestyle and Big Narstie needs.
Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment
Sunday Candy
Dir: Austin Vesely, Ian Eastwood & Chance The Rapper
Chance The Rapper and company get pretty close to matching the crowd-pleasing jubilance of Acid Rap’s highest highs in their new short film, Sunday Candy. It’s a high school musical in one shot, all pastels and primary colors as Chance and friends move through changing sets and increasingly complicated dance routines. Kudos for including footworkers and for enlisting Dlow for bop choreography.
Arca
‘Sad Bitch’
Dir: Jesse Kanda
The digital dancer of ‘Thievery’ and ‘Xen’ returns in the latest collaboration between Arca and Jesse Kanda, as each note of the melody escapes the body like a pellet of blood. Arca’s videos are always visceral — this one is no different.
GABI
‘Falling’
Dir: Allie Avital Tsypin
The video for haunting Sympathy single ‘Falling’ takes Gabi and her band of world-weary travelers on a vaguely post-apocalyptic journey as they prowl the country and perform choreographed dances, cutting between widescreen expanses and intimate close-ups as they make their way towards the Northern Lights.
Snoop Dogg
‘So Many Pros’
Dir: François Rousselet
Snoop’s Pharrell-produced throwback gets an equally-nostalgic video treatment as he pays tribute to Blaxploitation, Bond and grindhouse cinema by bringing his own Snoopified-takes on iconic artwork and designs to life. The devil’s in the details: The Wire star Felicia “Snoop” Pearson makes a cameo, and it even has a credit sequence.
John Carpenter
‘Night’
Dir: Gavin Hignight and Ben Verhulst
No, John Carpenter didn’t direct it, but Gavin Hignight and Ben Verhulst have captured the Master of Horror’s essence in ‘Night’, which plays like Drive in a virtual reality construct. It ends just when things are getting interesting — to be continued, either in film or in your nightmares.
Rihanna
‘American Oxygen’
Dir: Darren Craig
Earlier this month, Rihanna premiered the video for her dubstep-damaged new single ‘American Oxygen’ as a TIDAL exclusive. Now, the rest of us can enjoy her heavy-handed tour through American history via what is essentially a high-priced stock footage collage.
Cerrone feat. Beth Ditto
‘Supernature’ (Alan Braxe Mix)
Dir: SUPERBIEN
In this revamped version of ‘Supernature’, Cerrone sits in the dark as his music comes to life. A golden, four-headed bust of the Parisian disco king melts and expands into a golden symphony of drums, guitars and keyboards, and then a classical menagerie out of Greek mythology. After reaching its Olympian heights, it’s transmuted into — what else? — a gold record.
Ty Dolla $ign feat. Charli XCX and Tinashe
‘Drop That Kitty’
Dir: Shomi Patwary
Like the song itself, the video for ‘Drop That Kitty’ is a weird mix of sexy and playful. While they are rap video staples, the lowriders seem borrowed from Beyoncé’s ‘No Angel’, while the bikes are straight out of her ‘Blow’ video. The cat headed-backup dancers give it a weird touch, but we wish they would have doubled-down in that regard.
Colleen
‘Captain of None’
Dir: Naoko Tanaka
The abstract video for Colleen’s latest single is a series of gossamer galaxies and gaseous bodies, capturing light as its reflected and refracted through dark, endless space.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Ariel Kalma
‘Strange Dreams’
Dir: Misha Hollenbach & Joey Rashid
The grainy Super 8 footage of Lowe and Kalma as they take breaks from recording We Know Each Other Somehow in the Australian outback plays like B-roll from Sunshine Soup, the album’s accompanying documentary film which was also directed by Hollenbach and Rashid.
