Cassius – Go Up
2017 · Directed by Alex Courtès
27K Likes
Best comments
1.“French house legends Cassius, pop producer Pharrell and singer-songwriter Cat Power – a helluva unusual collaboration. The video is brilliant in its complicated simplicity.”
More comments
- 2.“I have a drawing assignment on diptychs, and I think I just found a treasure trove.”
- 3.“And I thought Nike's new ad was freaking innovative.”
The story
The Earth as the bottom half of a pile of pasta. That's how it opens, and it only gets stranger. Director Alex Courtès built the whole video out of stock footage from mainstream advertising, sliced it horizontally and vertically, and glued mismatched halves together so they line up into one impossible picture. Movement in one half carries into the other, so your brain keeps trying to believe it.
Laughing Squid called the results absurd. The Fader joked that it was the next level of the expanding brain meme. Both right. It's the glossiest, most forgettable footage advertising ever made, recycled into something you can't stop watching.
Cassius were the Paris duo Philippe Zdar and Boombass, and Go Up came off Ibifornia, their fourth album, released in August 2016 with Pharrell Williams and Cat Power on vocals. The video followed in spring 2017. In June 2019 Zdar died after a fall from a building in Paris, two days before the duo's last album, Dreems, came out. That makes this one a little bittersweet now. It still makes you grin.
