Gesaffelstein & Pharrell Williams – Blast Off
2019 · Directed by Warren Fu
115K Likes
The story
Gesaffelstein is Mike Lévy, a producer from Lyon who likes to stay half-hidden in black gloss and shadow. Pharrell is Pharrell. Blast Off is their song off Hyperion, the Frenchman's second album, out on Columbia in March 2019.
Warren Fu directed the video for Partizan, and it premiered on the Coachella livestream right after Gesaffelstein's set in April 2019 (his first live show since 2015, played in front of a monolith coated in Vantablack, the near-perfect black). The video looks like a lost reel from Tron. Pharrell sings in sunglasses, then takes them off and fires beams out of his eyes, Cyclops-style. Gesaffelstein works a glowing control panel, more outline than man. Then the sleek stuff tips into something closer to The Matrix, darker and more intense the longer it runs.
The credits are half the fun. Therapy Studios did the finishing, two dancers are listed (Teddy Forance and Kathryn McCormick), and Starburns Industries handled 3D printing and stop animation under Duke Johnson. Cold chrome future, partly built by hand one printed frame at a time.
