Project Description

BILLY FOX – Shapes music video review

(directed by Rodrigo Llauro)

The music video is an art form in itself— and not an easy one, either. It’s a few minutes of visual poetry where the score’s already written. The best of these are eccentric, eclectic, and most importantly, electric. Billy Fox’s Shapes takes all three criteria to the max. The music video for the indie soul electronica track, directed by AMNplify’s own Rodrigo Llauro, is a filmic experience in its own right.

Billy Fox

In the clip, Fox inhabits a domestic dwelling time-warped straight out of the 70s. It’s colourful and comforting, and delightfully kitschy (there’s even a light up to T-Rex, bless them). The bright salmons and lemon yellows visually offset the darker-sounding layers in the music, a rhythmic, staticky arrangement that could be confused with an underworld theme of the Super Nintendo-era video games. As the verse builds, Fox fights with a disembodied hand for the cathode-ray television’s remote— the first true WTF moment of the video. Throughout the clip, the mechanical mingles with the manual— high-heeled legs concealed by a fifties hoop skirt support a tabletop, manicured digits move record needles into place, and somehow, it’s not Addams family levels of creepy. In fact, it kind of makes perfect sense. It’s an abstract reminder of the pre-digital life. Decades clash visually and musically; the quirky cinematography brings the viewer into a place of suspended disbelief, and the perfect dark overtones in the track play like pixels. Shapes may be, to the ear, a brooding, driving track, but the shapes of the video are bright, fun, and nostalgic— from the wallpaper to Fox’s cubic breakfast cereal. As far as music videos go, Shapes is a retro delight. Within it are heard the echoes of game arcades of distant decades.

Billy Fox

Take yourself back (or maybe forward) in time with Billy Fox’s Shapes, available now on Youtube, iTunes, and Soundcloud.

AMNPLIFY – DB

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