Apr 11, 2016
Wildlife Control, a band formed by brothers Neil and Sumul Shah, has once again released an expertly crafted and insanely creative music video. The brothers gained popularity five years ago from their debut single "Analog or Digital," which featured a stop-motion video of Neil and Sumul on a beach in California. That video used technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript, and the SoundCloud API.
Their newly released music video, "Particles" comes off of their three-track EP of the same name, and again features intricate technologies blended in with dreamy pop music. This video is very different from the "Analog or Digital" one, namely because it focuses on the omnipresence of social media and its seemingly infinite amount of data. In Popular Science's article, Neil describes what brought the band to take a very different approach to this current video:
"After we finished the 'Analog or Digital' video, we had a cycle where I wanted to do another stop motion project, but Sumul was blunt. He said 'We did it, and it was fun and cool, but if we keep doing it, it'll be boring.' We didn't want to take something experimental and challenging and turn it to work."
The technologies used to create this hyperlapse video include the APIs of Instagram, Twitter, and Twitter Photo. The band used these to look for videos, people, and locations that would fit their idea of the music video, which took years, according to Sumul.
The "Particles" video is broken up into three parts: Illusion, Subtract, and Creature - the songs on their EP. I can only describe the video as something that will allow you to get lost in your own thoughts and emotions. The music itself is something to listen to when lying in your bed and looking up at the ceiling - dreamy and introspective. These qualities are what the project attempted to capture, according to Sumul:
"The video and the music always informed each other. Our intuition was progressively clarifying as we watched random videos, set to different music, that gave us various feelings, which we tried capture as we wrote the music. And then we would reflect that feeling into the film. It went back and forth as we went from sketch to high and higher levels of fidelity on each [the film and music]."
Like I said, it's a great listen - whether you're contemplating the meaning of life while laying on the grass at night, or thinking about how far you've come whilst walking meaninglessly through the city, "Particles" will be the best soundtrack to leave yourself alone with your thoughts.