Feast your eyes (and/or ears) – to celebrate NZ Music Month, we tasked 95bFM Programme Director, and Flicks contributor, Sarah Thomson with picking ten of the finest recent music vids from around Aotearoa.
1. Night Lunch – House Full of Shit
The finest Liam-only duo Ōtepoti has to offer, ‘House Full of Shit’ is Night Lunch’s very first foray into the world of music videos. A completely band-made, increasingly ~cooked~ greenscreen tale of capitalist nonsense and sweaty faces in chinos, Adult Swim/Doug Lussenhop fans will find much to love here. Despite the clip/song’s minimalist message: more, please.
2. Church & AP – AT THY FEET
Oscar Keys’ direction combines with Ezra Simons’ cinematography to create an incredibly visually rich giallo-meets-video-nasty narrative, sweeping through four of the five tracks on Church & AP’s ‘AT THY FEET (SIDE A)’ EP. Most music videos that feature extensive credits could be argued to do so as indulgence—but not this time, here it’s more than earned.
3. Anthonie Tonnon – Entertainment
No prizes for guessing which local Dame inspired Tonnon’s beautiful earworm, sorry. But that particular knowledge does make Sports Team’s (directing/creative duo Annabel Kean & Callum Devlin) choice to stage the song as a behind-the-scenes look at some pretty dangerously ropey television making all the more perfect. Follow their Instagram for some very lovely even further ‘behind the scenes’ pics.
4. Louisa Nicklin – There Will Be Times
To be honest, it’s incredibly hard to choose between the two most recent Louisa Nicklin videos, both co-directed by Nicklin and Sheldene Seth. The other, ‘To Be Fine’, features Nicklin and charismatic pals hanging out with equally charismatic cats. This one *just* pips it, due to the excellent metaphor of ‘liminal life space’ = ‘mid-haircut anxiety’. Hey, it’s totally a thing.
5. Mara TK – Toroa/The Albatross
A beautiful visual interpretation of the third single from Mara TK’s new album, courtesy of longtime collaborator, director and artist Mumu Moore. With TK writing the song in remembrance of the non-violent resistance to colonisation at Parihaka, Tola Newbery’s generational warrior figure here suggests the hope for a return one day, after many hard miles—like the Toroa, to peaceful strength. Beautiful.
6. Phodiso – War
If you’re an artist within Aotearoa who wants a video that can jostle shoulder-to-shoulder with the best videos from overseas, particularly within the realms of hiphop, there’s really only one name to call: director/editor Connor Pritchard. A master at capturing the power and dynamism of the tracks he’s asked to bring to screen, Pritchard’s work (and work ethic) is so important to the local scene that when $10,000 worth of gear was stolen from his van, it was an artist that led the charge to get him back on his feet. For Phodiso’s latest banger, ‘War’, Pritchard is at performance-clip best, but for something more cinematic in scope, check out MELODOWNZ’ recent ‘Money’.
7. Merk – Deep Dive
Sorry about it Mum, I’m double dipping on directing duo Sports Team here (see: Anthonie Tonnon’s ‘Entertainment’, above) because anyone who:
a) writes the name of the clip in a baked good;
b) puts Mark Perkins (a.k.a. Merk) in a chef’s hat;
c) has Jed Parsons cameo to maniacally eat a raw egg;
d) makes you simultaneously want pancakes immediately and never again…
…deserves all the attention they can get. Chef’s kiss.
8. Death and the Maiden – Waratah
Director Martin Sagadin makes things of rare beauty: things that are simultaneously stunning, eerily gothic, and somehow a little silly besides. Having turned out stunners for Aldous Harding; Marlon Williams; and Ben Woods, among others, their recent turn for Ōtepoti trio Death and the Maiden is no slouch. A stunning colour palette married to perfect Dunedin-gothic and band-member Lucinda King (who also worked on the video’s concept and execution) gradually merging with their landscape in an ever-so-slightly-silly ghillie suit.
9. AP & Kamahumble – HEKA HORCY
Another double-dip, this time for both director Oscar Keys and artist Albert Purcell a.k.a. AP (see Church & AP’s ‘At Thy Feet’, above). Bringing the truly infectious ‘HEKA HORCY’ to screen via a karaoke-style clip not only perfectly matches the track’s sense of play, of traditional elements meeting ‘the new’, but also succeeds in providing extra weight to AP and KOME member Kamahumble’s bilingual verses, spotlighting the use of Tongan, Samoan and English.
10. Miles Calder – Bad For Me
Miles Calder’s drummer, Nick George, is also a talented photographer/designer/creative, so it’s little wonder that his video for Calder’s ‘Bad For Me’ makes a pretty evocative short – even if what it’s evoking is how very possible it is for nice people to be …well, a bit useless. Never has being a bit rubbish at doing the laundry looked so relatable. (Calder’s album is called ‘Autopilot Life’, after all.)
Extra Treat: Bic Runga feat. Cass Basil & Kody Nielson – There is No Time / Kāore He Wā
Rats to high-concept music videos, sometimes all you really want is a truthful performance clip: this one courtesy of TVNZ’s excellent Waiata/Anthems series—which also features the likes of Che Fu, Katchafire, Hollie Smith and Melodownz embarking on journeys of discovery as they breathe life into new te reo Māori versions of their songs.
