Following the release of the deluxe version of their fifth studio album Blackbird, veteran New Zealand 7-piece band Fat Freddy’s Drop have unveiled the brand new music video for the album’s title track “Blackbird”. Watch the Jon Baxter-directed visuals below and purchase the Blackbird album now on iTunes. You can catch Fat Freddy’s Drop headlining Soundwave Festival and Secret Garden Party in July, while the band will be headlining at Alexander Palace on October 18.
“The blackbirds in the garden take flight in an animated music video for Blackbird, the title track to the award-winning album by Fat Freddy’s Drop. A kaleidoscopic, dream-like journey, the video evolves from a solitary blackbird to a mass of menacing blackbirds eventually smashing through the darkness to a party world of colour and magic.
Director Jon Baxter from Perceptual Engineering, Auckland built a 3D model of a blackbird and his team then set about making it fly. This meant creating an alembic model to work with in Flame – moving a virtual camera around a flying virtual bird. “Part way into the project, we locked into the journey with the ball and built this into the model”, Baxter said. “The penultimate smashing through the layers scene came about playing in Cinema 4D with particle explosions, using a vorony calculation algorithm to smash through the white world”.
Baxter’s philosophical approach for Blackbird aligns with the darkness of the lyrics by Freddy’s vocalist Joe Dukie. “The Blackbird in my garden is often the lingering fear that attacks my creative process and inhibits action. But this can turn out to be the very same force that allows magic to happen, the very thing that gives momentum to dreams and allows us to break through to the other side”, Baxter said.
Perceptual Engineering collaborated with Freddy’s music in 2006, with Baxter co-directing a short film of the track Ray Ray. Created from sculptures, stencil artwork and digital genius, a train traverses a cold landscape searching for a world with soul. Screened at film festivals, the work won Best International Music Video at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival.”
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