TV on the Radio – Second Song
2011 · Directed by Michael (Mikey) Please
10K Likes
Best comments
1.“This video was made with the following ingredients: white chocolate, coffee, salt, red food dye, painted glass, paper shards, green food dye, cut-out paper rings... and space stuff.”
More comments
- 2.“How is nobody talking about how amazing this animation is? Props to whoever did this!”
The story
In 2011 TV on the Radio did something most bands skip. They made a film for the whole album. Nine Types of Light came with an hour-long visual companion, a video for every track, with singer Tunde Adebimpe directing the whole thing and handing individual songs to different directors. For Second Song he picked Mikey Please, a Somerset-born stop-motion animator, because, as he told Dazed, he wanted it to look incredible.
Please had just won a BAFTA for his short film The Eagleman Stag, and he prefers his hands to a computer. The video follows a wanderer through a world of flux and chaos, built from models and papercraft with in-camera practical effects and digital work layered on top. It took a production designer, a team of compositors and more than a dozen model makers, shooting at Clapham Road Studios. Promonews called it a gobsmacking exercise in model-making and stop-motion. Hard to argue.
Nine Types of Light reached number 12 on the Billboard 200. It was also the last TV on the Radio album with bassist Gerard Smith, who died of lung cancer nine days after it came out. A band that cared this much about every frame. Worth watching twice.
