Urban landscapes, an unmanned vehicle and a slight incline: a recipe for success.

 

So, you’re making a music video and you want to have a scrolling landscape in the background. Do you record the backdrop seperately and edit it in? No, that’d be too fake. What about recording it using a camera fitted to a movable pedastal? Nah, too easy. How about you put a video camera on an unmanned vehicle and record as it slowly rolls down a slight incline?

Perfect.

Seemingly that is the logic of Darling James in his brilliant, but absurdly unorthodox, music video for latest single God’s Graffiti. The song itself is a textured work of indie-pop majesty, weaving together treble-tickling vocal notes with a series of guitar lines that slide into and across each other in the background. The video is pretty straightforward, featuring James singing to a camera that slowly rolls through graffiti-adorned urban settings.

It’s a video that focusses predominately on putting the music front and centre for audience digestion, which makes the idea to risk an accident even more preposterously brilliant. In fact, James reportedly had to jump back into the car at several points during the shoot to prevent it from rolling away into train tracks and bike paths. Absolutely brilliant.