Editor

Avner Shiloah

Alexander Brown directs an evocative promo for British-French artist Maïlé Doremus-Cook (aka Memory of Jane).&nbsp;"The video&nbsp;is about the artist's anxieties, which manifest in a swarm of butterflies which he has learned to coexist with," director Alexander Brown mentions.Delivering a striking performance whilst covered in several real-life butterflies, it's an angsty, reflective visual with the artist at the centre, whose calm yet vulnerable demeanour offers a shortcut to his inner world.&nbsp;

United Kingdom

Alexander Brown

Ellis Fox

Dax Sharkey

Sam Hotson

ABPC.UK

Blue Flowers

Alternative

Memory Of Jane 'So Pacific' by Alexander Brown

Memory-Of-Jane-'So-Pacific'-by-Alexander-Brown

Alexander Brown directs a brilliantly ferocious performance promo for Bloc Party's return to action with Traps.&nbsp;Playing their comeback single, frontman&nbsp;Dele Okereke and his bandmates are effectively trapped themselves, within a seething&nbsp;mass of enthusiastic fans.&nbsp;This is presented in a disorientating fashion, mostly in extreme close-up - this was shot by DoP Pieter Snyman on a probe lens -&nbsp;intercut with the frenetic motion of the crowd, forcing their way ever closer to the group, and at one point dragging a bandmember from a car.&nbsp;The blood-red lighting&nbsp;and indistinct shots of the people surrounding them (they are wearing masks throughout) creates a breathless atmosphere, which matches Bloc Party's unconstrained energy. Overall, it's a brilliantly kinetic and stylish piece of work by Alexander Brown, making one of his irregular returns himself to music videos.[imgtoken data:1]<blockquote>There’s something intrinsically cathartic but also unsettling about being in a crowd.</blockquote>"The basic idea for me, was to make a video which felt like you are in the middle of a mosh pit," says Brown.&nbsp;"After being conditioned by lockdown, there’s something intrinsically cathartic but also slightly unsettling about being in a crowd."I was immediately drawn into the sardonic character Kele created in the lyrics, which is all a bit wild and unhinged and lurid. I wanted to capture that feeling of being in a crowd or a club and not being entirely comfortable with the intimacy. It’s a performance video in all it's&nbsp;glory. I wanted it all to be shot in an unhinged way, as if the band are playing from within the crowd, removing the stage/crowd divide."The camera swings and turns like a headless chicken - and everywhere it turns we unravel a new moment. It feels chaotic but within the chaos we have disorientating, dizzying transitions, and carefully orchestrated setups with surprises and twists and turns along the way. The song is called Traps. So it seemed interesting to have the band feel like they were trapped in this mob and we can’t quite tell if its amazing, or uncomfortable.[imgtoken data:2]<blockquote>I wanted to give the video a touch of&nbsp;The Evil Dead.</blockquote>"It was a conscious decision to give everyone masks. Aside from the safety aspect, I wanted the crowd to be anonymous and menacing - we don’t see anyone’s faces, only their legs, or chest. I want it to feel like a jungle of limbs. They are all wearing dark clothes so there is a homogenous feel to them, threatening."We shot this with a probe lens so we could go right up to the band, and do all sorts of amazing movements. Big thanks to Piet [Snyman] for waving around a metre-long camera completely handheld! We shot this on a Red Komodo, which I think makes it the longest lens, with one of the smallest cameras."Brown adds that the moment when the bandmember is dragged from the on-set car was another touch of madness that the song required.&nbsp;"I wanted to give the video a touch of The Evil Dead, and having the crowd pressed up to the glass, pulling Russel out of the door at the end just seemed to do that. We weren’t sure if we were going to get that on the day as it was the last shot, with twenty&nbsp;minutes to spare we just managed to squeeze it in. It was handy having an incredibly long lens as it means we could poke it right through a car window. "I want to give a big shout out to all the people who came down on the day, the energy we got from the crowd was fantastic!"

Cardel

Carla Mooney

Paolo De Bautista

Pieter Snyman

Sophie Roberts

Delwyn Mooney

Jonny Tully

John Moule

Josh Tue

Patrycja Cygan

Brett Hills

Helio Ribeiro 

Indie Rock

Rock

Bloc Party 'Traps' by Alexander Brown

Bloc Party - Traps (Official Video)

Avner Shiloah directs a&nbsp;nostalgic meditation on&nbsp;the buoyancy of a child's dreams, for Douglas' Clouds.Juxtaposed with the often harsh reality of adulthood, the video is made up of 8mm footage of the artist's family, combined with footage shot by filmmaker Alexander Brown (who directed James Blake's If The Car Behind You Moves Ahead).&nbsp;The dichotomy of the lo-fi aesthetic in contrast with the emotional story creates a yearning, nostalgic vibe, which is very much inkeeping with the themes of the track.

Gentle Beast Productions, Inc.

Experimental Pop

Douglas 'Clouds' by Avner Shiloah

Douglas - "Clouds"

A man&nbsp;finds himself in an upside-down world, in Alexander Brown's mesmerizing video for Sub Focus and Wilkinson.Employing spectacular drone footage of Canary Wharf in London and a clever use of Steadicam, Brown&nbsp;toys with the viewer's experctations and sense of visual perspective, in a slow-motion rollercoaster where Down is usually Up, and vice versa - and is occasionally vertigo-inducing.Brown's approach - which originated as a lockdown video idea and evolved as film limitations eased - is well suited to this dreamy dance track, with its lyrical references to gravity. Our hero - dancer Mikey Boats - appears to be unbound by such things.&nbsp;

Theo Youngstein

Sweetshop

Sam Care

Toby Tomkins

CHEAT

Mikey Boats

Dance

Sub Focus & Wilkinson 'Air I Breathe' by Alexander Brown 

Sub Focus, Wilkinson - Air I Breathe

People are rendered monumental,&nbsp;and moments of a life are examined in forensic detail,&nbsp;in Alexander Brown's mesmerising video for&nbsp;Los Angeles' duo Sym Fera.Brown employs a distinctive camera technique, using close focus&nbsp;lenses,&nbsp;to pass across the human body as if it's&nbsp;a landscape, and effectively freeze time. It is a process that allows him to&nbsp;investigate the brutal moments in a character's history&nbsp;that helped to turn him into the unflinching monster&nbsp;he has become.&nbsp;

United States

Adam Nelson

Carolyn Pedrossian

Sym Fera 'Little Things' by Alexander Brown 

little things

Faced with the demands of the Covid-19 lockdown, Orlando Weeks and director Alexander Brown have created an 'iso video' that embraces lo-fi experimentation with wonderfully hypnotic results.Brown sent the ex-Maccabees bandmember a Canon 5D (maybe the one he used when he was launching his directing career a decade ago) for him to self-shoot his performance of Blood Sugar. He has taken that footage and run it through circuit mixers to create distorted visual effects. Weeks's head has become a disembodied graphic form, composed of lines of light, sometimes a sort of inverse sillhouette, other times a face caught in chiaroscuro-profile.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This is Brown's first video since his <a href="https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2018/01/26/james-blake-if-car-beside-you-moves-ahead-alexander-brown/51519" target="_blank">James Blake video for If The Car Beside You Moves Ahead</a> - another fascinating exercise in visual distortion. The current situation may have instigated it, but like his Blake video the results of the experimentation are not just lockdown-specific. They work entirely on their own terms.

PIAS

Indie

Orlando Weeks 'Blood Sugar' by Alexander Brown

Orlando Weeks - Blood Sugar

James Blake&#39;s new track, featuring astonishing cut-up vocals from Blake, has inspired a brilliant visual accompaniment&nbsp;from his longtime collaborator Alexander Brown.Under Brown&#39;s auspices, Blake takes to the wheel of a 1991 Corvette for a night-time drive through LA. And just as Blake experiments with his sound, Brown disrupts the realism of Blake&#39;s drive, subtly distorting and vibrating as well as speeding up&nbsp;the footage, and orchestrating light to match the music. The result is completely mesmerizing.Blake and Brown go back a long way - all the way to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isIABK-0ohQ">The Wilhelm Scream</a>, seven years ago. But this takes their creative partnership to a new place altogether. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Avner Shiloah

Editor

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