European Sci-Fi/Fantasy Musical Stimulation

By Péter MARTON

** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. **

This will be an open-ended post. You're more than welcome to contribute to it in the form of suggestions in comments here or on Facebook (see the link to our group above).

The aim is to collect European music videos that use sci-fi and/or fantasy themes. The image of a funny robot or monster flying by typically will not do: the connection to the speculative genre has to be more substantial. It has to be exciting enough to get us to speculate about it! So I expect the clip in question to either present a narrative or at least an interesting situation that features the performers and/or clip characters in an actual sci-fi or fantasy setting for the duration of the video.

1. The Chemical Brothers: Free Yourself (2018)

Directors: Dom & Nic (Dominic Hawley and Nic Goffey)

Robots with AI used as "AI Labour Solutions" by a company called Roboforce await assignment in a warehouse... but then they rise up to throw a party and go crazy in ways humans cannot. The best part begins from around 2:34 -- just when you might be forgiven for thinking that these are just robots dancing, the resemblance to humans takes a drop. Can't help but have flashbacks of The Chemical Brothers' earlier hit, "Hey Boy, Hey Girl", while watching this, and this is freaky (check it out to know what I mean).

P.S: A tip: watch till the very end.



2. Łąki Łan - Lovelock (2012)

Director: Julia Bui Ngoc

A lot of weird action in this clip. The pieces don't quite fit together but the visually stimulating images, including some stunning interplanetary scenery, together with the funky and synthy sounds, make you feel like they are really telling you a story. A Rorschach test! Plus, some more dancing robots.



3. The Prodigy: The Wild Frontier (2015)

Director: Mascha Halberstad

A forest of lawlessness and some evil dudes - then crazy metamorphosis follows, of course. Hunters come to be the ones hunted, and we all become haunted. Don't you feel daunted.



4.The Swedish House Mafia: Greyhound (2012)

Robo-greyhounds controlled via virtual turntables compete in a salt lake area before a neo-renaissance crowd betting on which of them is going to win. Yes, just watch. Beware that there be product placement in here.



5. Björk: Army of Me (1995)

Director: Michel Gondry

Hell, this looks good even today. And sounds good, of course. Björk's voice, combined with a nasty and surreal dystopia, culminating in some reanimational terrorism, for want of a better term.



6. Fatboy Slim: Weapon of Choice (2001)

Director: Spike Jonze

This video is famous for featuring actor Christopher Walken. My personal take on it is that this shows in a fantastically simple and yet grand way how we live out inevitably bipolar lives over the long run, ending similarly inevitably with still, motionless state. Though we might well take off and fly, at times.



7. Jamiroquai: Virtual Insanity (1996)

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Back to funk, with Jay Kay pulling some cool stunts while singing and dancing on a room with a moving floor -- modernity with a touch of... some cockroaches at one point. Absolutely not the only sci-fi-themed ('ish) feat from Jamiroquai, but good to include here to further stimulate the senses. Anyway, I'm the MC here, so I get to choose. Till now! Below, after this, suggestions coming in from others shall follow...



To be continued.

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Update no. 1: A fantastic resource from Adrian Bancu (h/t!). He collected, in a thematically organised way (unlike the strictly random state of affairs here), a lot of songs that are relevant to our interests here. Check it out. It is in Romanian, but this shouldn't make it impossible to follow some of what's there, not to speak of the links to videos.

I was reminded there of Queen in general, and so now I'm asking how I could leave out Princes of the Universe (1986), written for the soundtrack of The Highlander movie, from the selection above. Clip directed by Russell Mulcahy.



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Update no. 2, thanks to Réka from our group. Links to many more songs are shared in the group -- I will only include here two out of these that I am selecting arbitrarily.

First up, "Stay," from Shakespeares Sister (1992), from the time when it was already a duo. It is thus testing our geographcial boundaries (from the outside) in fact, because it was a transatlantic duo, at that. But the British involvement (especially as the founding party), not speak of Shakespeare's involvement, shall be enough perhaps.



Secondly, "Talk," by Coldplay (2005). Some honest exoplanetary commentary on the relationship between artist and art consumer.



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Update no. 3, having come across some good ones again.

First up, a mesmerising clip from Forest Swords, a British project. Titled "Crow" (2018), it gives you a site-seeing tour of some inhumanely scaled apartment blocks that would be intimidatinng when shown this way even if there would be no humans residing on the planet any more. Or all the more so, then? Go figure.



Secondly, "Agartha" by Westbam (1999). "Don't you wanna go, on my UFO!?" An instant classic, now two decades old.


To be continued...