Hugh Mulhern directs a feverish hyper-pop fantasy for the return of Porter Robinson with his big new track Cheerleader, exploring the intense and unusual bond between the artist and his fans in a wonderfully off-kilter multi-media blockbuster. 

As with Mulhern's acclaimed videos for Hak Baker last year for Telephones 4 Eyes and Doolally, this is a captivating combination of formats - live action, AI animation, CGI and stop motion - in the telling of a supercharged narrative involving Porter's engagement with excitable superfans who take many different forms, but all share the same anime-style features of Porter's 'cheerleader'. 

From the moment of Porter's apparent creation of the song in a studio environment, to appearing on a TV screen, to that becoming the basis of a karaoke session, Mulhern esablishes a constant, breahtless intperly webether the artist and his cheerleaders - particularly the one masked girl who may be Potter's ultimate puppetmaster.

Or maybe its the other way around? Porter becomes a Kong-like monster who destroys other versions of his greatest fan - including the cute stop motion puppet - as the action accelerates ever faster as it hops through different forms of animation, losing all basis in reality. 

"I wanted to make something that looked at extreme fandom and narcissism," explains Mulhern. "As we fall through different layers of reality I wanted the viewer to ask 'are we in the fantasies of the fans or in Porter’s own interpretation of their fantasies?'

"While it’s specific to Porter’s experience as an artist it is as much about contemporary society's relationship with extreme individualism. If everyone is having their 15 minutes of fame does that
mean everyone has also become a super fan?"

It's a masterclass in maximalism and also closely follows the subject of the song - effectively that symbiotic relationship between artist and fan. Mulhern has tapped into the hyperactive aesthetic of the subgenre, and created something that feels polished, elevated and unforgettable.