Thom Yorke’s most recent solo album, ANIMA, came with a short film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson when it released earlier this year. The visual journey doesn’t stop there though, as the Radiohead frontman has now released a follow-up in the form of a video for the track “Last I Heard (...He Was Circling The Drain)”.
Obviously – this being Thom Yorke and all – he doesn’t ditch the dystopian vibe in the new video, which is hand-rendered by the NYC studio Art Camp.
It opens on images of a city falling apart, flocks of what you could safely assume are crows in search of carrion, and anonymous zombielike hordes wandering the streets. “Swallowed up by the city,” Thom Yorke sings.
In a statement, Art Camp has explained the process of depicting the journey of a spacesuit-clad figure through this landscape, with its beautiful light, heavy atmosphere, and sense of impending doom. “Our first and last goal was to serve the feelings of the song and the record,” it reads.
“Thom shared a list of visions with us, disconnected images from his dreams, and we expanded on it with visions from everyone who joined the video team, over a dozen of us.”
This included the visions of Stanley Donwood, the artist behind Radiohead’s universe.
“At its core, our intention was to communicate the experience of feeling completely on your own, surrounded by people you see yourself in but don’t understand, who have lost their minds to the city and can’t see that you need their help.”
Sounds nightmarish, which explains the floating cars, the snippets of running crowds, and the birds eerily dropping from the sky.
“The process for making this animation was extremely iterative and cyclical, and started from every direction at once,” the statement continues. “We experimented with clay sculpture and one-cent 3D horses, crowd simulations and charcoal dust, linear storytelling and abstract expression.”
“We made the entire video and threw it away, made it again, threw it away, dozens of times. This of course was stressful but also beautiful.”
See for yourself below.