Groundislava’s new album Frozen Throne is, essentially, about one man’s downfall after he loses the girl he loves in a virtual realm. (It’s also, not surprisingly, an homage to William Gibson’s Neuromancer.) There’s a theme that lends itself to a slam-dunk music video, right? Whip up a concept in the vein of The Matrix or Tron, hit “record,” and ta-da! Instant Vimeo hit. Groundislava—aka Jasper Patterson—took it a little further. He made the video a world you can actually play in.
The playable version of “Girl Behind the Glass” looks like what would happen if Rick Deckard dropped acid and went to Coachella in 2019 to search for an origami unicorn. (OK, in this case it’s a girl, but you get the idea.) As the song streams, players can point-and-click around in the video’s world to see distorted versions of what’s onscreen. There aren’t really points or conquests or anything, but the simple act of exploring its neon headtrip is more engaging than most music videos out there. (Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” notwithstanding.) It’s a vibe that permeates the Frozen Throne album and something Patterson wanted to infuse into the song’s video.
“Coming down from a number of different substances, [the protagonist of Frozen Throne] recklessly wanders into the cyberpunk abyss of a futuristic metropolis” before eventually finding his lost love,” Patterson says. “We came up with a sort of roller coaster of scenes and images that exist in a realm somewhere between the virtual and ‘IRL’ worlds within the story, with the interactive component of the ‘video’ placing the viewer in the ‘driver’s seat’ of said roller coaster.”
Created by “experimental director duo” The Great Nordic Sword Fights, the resulting “video”—actually more like an interactive videogame (download it here)—for “Girl Behind the Glass” feels like getting lost in a hyper-color Max Headroom clip. Users maneuver through the experience lead by a Power Glove-like hand and are free to look around the environment as they look for the eponymous girl. “If the mouse button is pressed the image will distort with colorful noises and effects,” Patterson says, “simulating a lapse in the character’s grasp on reality.”
It’s fun, even a little goofy—and its soundtrack is heavenly for anyone who misses Tears for Fears and/or Level 42. It’s also indicative of a mix of immense creativity and irreverence, that must run in the family. Patterson’s father, Mike Patterson, is the guy who did the animation for a-ha’s now-legendary video for “Take On Me.” (He also worked on Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract.”) Not that the younger Patterson was looking to necessary create the exact same 1980s magic of his father’s videos.
“I don’t think his work directly inspired this video stylistically, but, in general, growing up around [it] created an unbreakable bond between sight and sound for me,” he says. “It helps when I collaborate with visual artists to create a music video because I enter the process with such concrete visual concepts already in mind.”
Check out a more traditional version of Groundislava’s new music video, which premiered today, above.
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