GENER8ION feat. 070 Shake – Neo Surf
2021 · Directed by Romain Gavras
133K Likes
Best comments
1.“In a post-apocalyptic world, this is the kind of freedom I want my future and nonexistent children to feel.”
More comments
- 2.“I'm 65 years old. Something in the whole vibe of this song found a hidden part of the soul of my youth from about 1960, and it haunts me. Given the age of these artists, I can't begin to imagine what they were channeling to create this. I'll just accept the magic.”
The story
GENER8ION is two Frenchmen with a shared vision of the year 2034: director Romain Gavras and producer Surkin. Gavras is the guy behind M.I.A.'s Born Free, Jay-Z and Kanye's No Church in the Wild and Jamie xx's Gosh, which took a Golden Lion at Cannes Lions. Surkin makes French house and plays festivals like Coachella. Neo Surf was their first new song in five years, with 070 Shake of G.O.O.D. Music on vocals.
The video drops a gang of kids into a wrecked Athens in 2034. They hunt ostriches. They carry samurai swords. They ride hydrofoil boards like the end of the world is just another weekend. It opens with a voice talking about how good it feels to be up in the sky, away from everybody – then a gunshot, and the beat kicks in. It was Gavras's first time shooting in Greece (his father is the Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras), and he said he felt at home.
The pair don't call it post-apocalyptic. Their idea is that the apocalypse is already here, and the kids are still being kids anyway. Onassis Culture co-produced it, it first played as a three-screen piece at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, and it hit 1.5 million YouTube views in four days. Surf's up. Civilization's down.
