It’s that time of the year again when we look back on some of our favorite releases from the past 12 months. Today, we watch our Favorite Music Videos of 2018. With thirty-five entries to round out the collection, this year we cast a wide reaching net to bring you some of the best visuals from the last year. While perennial favorites like Oneohtrix Point Never, Apex Twin, and Death Grips continue to release cutting edge material, this collection also includes excellent but more “lo-fi” examples of video art from Drahla, Arp, Escape-ism, Julia Holter, and Loma.
In addition, with questions about the nature of Artificial Intelligence increasingly dominating discussions about culture and art, Lorem‘s “3402 SELVES SUBS”, Moritz Simon Geist‘s “Making Techno with Music Robots”, and The Chemical Brothers‘ “Free Yourself” all weigh in with intriguing opinions regarding these advancements in technology. But, when it comes down to deciding the most important video of the year, Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” takes the honor with a chilling rebuke of our Nation’s long-running history of racism and violence.
Below, you can watch each video individually from last to first, or you can jump straight to #1 with the YouTube playlist above!
35. Lorem “3402 SELVES SUBS”
Lorem is a music-centered multidisciplinary project helmed by the Italian musician/visual artist Francesco D’Abbraccio. On February 13th of next year he will release Adversarial Feelings (Undisclosed Recipient/Krisis Publishing), an 8-track audio/visual collection due out via SD card/book format. “3402 SELVES SUBS” is the first in a series of 8 videos included on the release. The images were produced using an AI designed by D’Abbraccio and the information engineer Nicola Cattabiani. Employing an “elastic LERP” algorithm trained on thousands of pictures of celebrities, the AI generates completely synthesized images synched to the music through transient-led analyses of the audio source.” With no human editing involved, the result is a psychedelic visual experience that melts everyday and familiar imagery into hybridized formations that are both eerie and bizarre.
34. Deer Venom “Not Today”
Seattle’s Deer Venom released a self-titled EP this past winter, and the rowdy 4-track collection included this bonkers video for the standout cut “Not Today.” Directed and animated by a dubious figure who goes by the name Pilfered Viewings III, the video is an homage to old film noir, B-grade horror flicks, and Russ Meyer’s buxom classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill. When asked for a synopsis, Viewings offered this: “”Not Today” chronicles the exploits of a creeping Orange Menace. When a band of Supernal Females hops aboard a flying saucer to meet the challenge, it leads to an epic showdown at the White House.”
33. Boy Harsher “Fate”
Electronic music duo Boy Harsher returns on February 1st with a brand new LP entitled Careful due out on Nude Club Records. This year we got a peek into what the pair has cooking up on their upcoming long-player with videos for “Face the Fire” and “Fate.” While both are definitely worth your time, “Fate”‘s gory vampire drama really stands out with excellent cinematography and a griping performance from actress Vari Watt. Shot in Glasgow, Scotland, filmmaker/photographer Bryan M. Ferguson handles writing, production, directing, and editing in this haunting video about a young woman’s downward spiraling lust for male blood.
32. Michele Mercure “An Electronumentary”
This past November RVNG Intl., in association with sister label Freedom To Spend, continued their preservation efforts with an anthology of music from the sound artist Michele Mercure. Beside Herself collects together music from Mercure’s self-produced and distributed cassettes released between 1983 and 1990. For more information about the artist’s intriguing career on the fringes of electronic music and cassette culture, we recommend you start with RVNG Intl.’s write-up about Beside Herself, as well as this “electromentary” directed by Mary Haverstick. Mercure’s track “Mother,” off her 1990 effort Dreamplay, soundtracks this tongue-and-cheek exploration of the nature of electronic music. “Ok, how is electronic music made,” she begins the video by asking, before wandering into a rhetorical cul-de-sac as she searches for an acceptable answer.
31. Escape-ism “Bodysnatcher”
Ian Svenonius‘ project Escape-ism released a stripped down and primal LP effort called The Lost Record this past September via Merge Records. “Bodysnatcher” was the second single off the upcoming album, and it came with this video directed by his Escape-ism collaborator Alexandra Cabral–who also directed eye-worthy efforts for tracks like “Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day,” “Nothing Personal,” and “I’m a Lover (at Close Range).” While Ian’s inimitable style and infectious vocal delivery make all of those videos a treat, “Bodysnatcher”‘s tropically themed visuals featuring Svenonius and Cabral as they shimy and shake in the surf and sand, ranked as our favorite of the batch.
30. Protovulcan “Game Over Now”
Chicago’s Protovulcan returned this year with another Moog-powered LP of frenetic synth-punk called Psychic Pinball. The video for the track “Game Over Now” was directed and animated by the artist/educator Phil Hastings. With neuron melting visuals meant to emulate the out-of-control experience of playing pinball, Hastings’ animations are sure to send you into hypnogogic overload.
29. La Luz “Cicada”
The ladies in La Luz sure conjure up plenty of surf-noir magic on their 2018 LP Floating Points (Hardly Art). “Cicada” is a standout track from the effort, and the video for the cut is directed by Ryan Daniel Browne. Starring all four members of the band in a griping love triangle sure to bring to mind the best elements of your favorite daytime soap drama, this episode of La Luz features plenty of Romantic plot twists and spills to keep you hanging on the edge of your seat.
28. Knife Knights “Give You Game”
Knife Knights, the collaborative project featuring Shabazz Palaces’ Ishmael Butler (Digable Planets) and former Seattle, now LA-based producer Erik Blood, kicked things off this year with a digital single and video for “Give You Game” (Sub Pop). The visuals for the cut were directed by Justin Henning. From an initially surreal opening inside a warehouse containing giant Renaissance-era like sculptors draped in black paint, the camera passes thru a cracked door and out into a moss covered forest. With the camera continuing on a steady trajectory thru the emerald colored woodland, we watch a slow gathering throng of naked forest dwellers as they make their way to a place in the woods where the Palaceer, and a strangely visaged cohort, hold court for what is sure to be an undoubtedly deep wisdom session.
27. Eartheater “Claustra”
The Queens-based musician and artist Alexandra Drewchin returned this year with another LP installment from her amazing Eartheater project. IRISIRI is her third full length, and it came out June 8th via the Berlin-based label PAN. “Claustra” closes the critically lauded collection, and the video treatment for the cut was directed by Christine Zenyi Lu, as well as Drewchin herself. The grave haunting visuals star the artist alongside fellow dancer Gina Chiappetta, with Drewchin also responsible for the choreography. Coupling the dancers rigorous physicality and imposing presence with an eerie locale, “Claustra” is guaranteed to leave a lasting impression.
26. The Soft Moon “Like A Father”
The Soft Moon‘s Luis Vasquez lays it all bare on his fourth studio album Criminal out this past February on Sacred Bones. Director Kelsey Henderson, also responsible for other videos from the album like “Burn,” “It Kills,” and “Choke,” returns to do the honors here. Like those previous efforts, the look is VHS inspired with plenty of image glitch and static helping to deliver the song’s corrupted message. With Vasquez appearing at the center of the action in a cracked and blurry hall of mirrors, while a hooded figure stabs the walls with a stiletto and someone else writhes inside a black plastic trash bag, the video for “Like A Father” is in keeping with Criminal as it exudes a real snuff film vibe.
25. Death Grips “Flies”
Death Grips followed up on their 2016 LP effort Bottomless Pit with another doozy of a long-player this year entitled Year Of The Snitch (Third Worlds/Harvest Records). Most things these fellas put out is usually accompanied by a head-scratching “?!,” and “Flies” was no exception. The group’s ability to critically confound while continually bucking the rules of commercial pop music is what makes them so intriguing, though. While this cut finds MC Ride vomiting flies, if dude would just stop jumping around for a minute maybe his dyspeptic stomach would settle down a bit.
24. Mass Gothic “J.Z.O.K.”
Mass Gothic‘s hypnagogic brand of technicolor pop really shines on the track “J.Z.O.K.,” the third song on their 2018 LP effort, I’ve Tortured You Long Enough (Sub Pop). The video for the track was directed by the Brooklyn-based production company Loroto and was shot in the band’s “favorite areas” of Maspeth, Queens. While the visuals doesn’t feature any head spinning plot twists or elaborate production details–maybe just an interesting costume choice or two–the video does star the Mass Gothic duo of Noel Heroux and Jessica Zambri. Really, though, when you have as much charisma as these two, you don’t need much else. While the married pair have known each other for eighteen years or more, their connection here seems as fresh and vital as ever!
23. Proc Fiskal “Dopamine”
Scottish producer Joe Powers releases instrumental, grime-infused music under the moniker Proc Fiskal, and this year the young artist put out his debut LP Insula via Hyperdub Records. Powers’ sample-based creations often draw from video games and his own field recordings. Operating at around 160 bpm, their complex rhythms make nods to Chicago Footwork, as well as UK genres like Jungle and Garage. Powers’ video for “Dopamine” exists in similar territory. Featuring a twitchy jumble of imagery in various resolutions and fidelity, the artist pulls from a wide variety of source material–including his own hand shot footage, news channels, and video games. Organized on screens-within-screens, Powers delivers a dizzying sense of information overload.
22. Arp “Fluorescences”
The New York City-based artist, producer, and DJ Alexis Georgopoulos returned this year with his project Arp releasing the ZEBRA LP on June 22nd via Mexican Summer. The video for “Fluorescences” was shot this Spring in New York City, and it features art direction from Georgopoulos himself. Filmed by cinematographer Shawn Brackbill, and starring Monica Hofstadter–who also edited the video–the initial plan was to shoot on VHS but when that fell through the team decided to work in Super 8. Influenced by Wim Wenders’ documentary Notebooks on Cities and Clothes and Elizabeth Lennard’s Tokyo Melody, the video follows Hofstadter on her day-into-night urban adventure. Utilizing an intimate, hand-held style, Spring in NYC comes alive with florid images of blooming vegetation and the flickering, luminous glow of fluorescent lights. Meanwhile, Hofstadter’s understated presence shines in gleaming spangles as she pauses to enjoy a tree full of fragrant blossoms or the vivid colors of a coy peacock.
21. Drahla “Twelve Divisions of the Day”
Drahla‘s Captured Tracks‘ 7″ single “Twelve Divisions of the Day” was one of our favorite post-punk tracks of the year. Exuding a tightly wound angst, the band’s home-cooked visuals add an artful sense of mystery to the proceedings. Moving between several scenarios including, most notably, the creation of large-scale, painted canvases, as well as the strange happenings outside of a “Data Collection” center, Drahla’s punk styled imagery and frantically paced visuals make for urgent viewing.
20. Klaus Johann Grobe “Discogedanken”
The Swiss duo Klaus Johann Grobe released their LP Du Bist So Symmetrisch this past October via the Chicago-based label Trouble In Mind. Fellow countrymen Jonas Baumann created the visuals for the standout album track “Discogedanken.” Straddling the divide between the “imperfection” of hand crafted paintings and objects, as well as the clear, velvety coolness of digital re/productions,” Baumann’s surreal imagery follows billowing silken shapes as they travel thru a variety of abstracted settings making for an experience that is both reservedly cerebral and sensuously tactile.
19. Forest Swords “Crow”
The UK producer Matthew Barnes returned this year under his Forest Swords moniker with a new compilation for the famed DJ-Kicks series. While the 27-track collection included cuts from artists like Laurel Halo, Demdike Stare, and Dead Can Dance, Barnes also worked in his own previously unreleased song, “Crow.” The video for the track is directed by the architect/filmmaker Liam Young with VFX-supervision provided by Alexey Marfin. Centered around views of an imposing but imaginary apartment complex, the footage was initially part of Tomorrow’s Storeys, a symposium organized by Young that aimed to produce a series of critical fictions about the urban future of Athens, Greece.
18. FRIGS “Talking Pictures”
The Toronto-based post-punk band FRIGS released their debut LP Basic Behaviour this past February on Arts & Crafts, and it featured this Christopher Mills directed video for the cut “Talking Pictures.” Discussing the track, the band explains that it “eschews narrative” in place of “evoking a sense of disillusionment.” Mills follows suit with a dizzying, monochromatic portrayal of the band that constantly shifts directions as the imagery stutters and blurs into double and triple vision.
17. Chad VanGaalen “Host Body”
Chad VanGaalen‘s surreal animations have amazed us since the early days of Live Eye Tv when we were still just a cable access show airing music videos and taped live performances. Through the years, his music and drawings have retained their Day-Glo sense of child-like wonder, but beneath those bubblegum hues lies a world teeming with strange menace. “Host Body,” off VanGaalen’s 2017 LP effort Light Information (Sub Pop) is no exception. Offering up his body as a host site for parasitic demons is frightening enough, but the prospect becomes even more daunting when the artist’s bizarre retinue of characters come to life in all their psychedelic glory.
16. Julia Holter “Whether”
Julia Holter returned this year with her brilliant LP Aviary out now on Domino Records. Dicky Bahto, who also directed videos for the album tracks “Words I Heard” and “I Shall Love 2,” returns to do the video honors on this song “Whether.” Indulging his love for “hand-worked darkroom techniques,” Bahto has this to say about the video: “Exposing 16mm film prepared with cyanotype solution to the light of the sun on my balcony every afternoon over a couple of weeks, making the work in small pieces, meant that as the fires in Southern California darkened the sky with smoke, my exposures took increasingly long amounts of time to get images ever more faint. Julia wanted me to share this anecdote since it fits the dystopian theme of the song, which is about the world collapsing around us because of climate change.”
15. Loma “Dark Oscillations”
Loma‘s excellent, self-titled debut out this year on Sub Pop came with intriguing videos for “White Glass,” “Relay Runner,” and “Dark Oscillations.” While all three videos were fairly straightforward, low-budget affairs centered around band member Emily Cross, each one shone with her compelling presence. When not illustrating videos on a giant sketch pad or racing against herself on a beachy dune, Cross channel surfs late into the night while we watch. In that way, “Dark Oscillations” goes “meta,” turning normal video viewing upside down. Our voyeuristic pleasure in watching Cross in her off-handed intimacy is critiqued, and ultimately interrupted, when she shatters the safety of our vantage behind the fourth wall with a vicious stare that screams, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
14. Rival Consoles “Untravel”
Rival Consoles‘ “Untravel” video was directed by the Cologne-based artist/designer Misha Shyukin. The artist explains that it was a way to visualize “the feeling of being lost and ennui…” Like hopping a ride on a Voyager mission to Mars, Shyukin’s images depict a lonely and desolate planet. Following a glitched camera view across wide, lifeless panoramas that bloom with eerie light reveals a lone figure on this tortured landscape. Like the sole survivor of some failed space mission, this small form against the dizzying vistas definitely imparts that feeling of existential isolation and the effect is only intensified by Rival Consoles’ beatless and introspective soundtrack.
13. HXXS “SEPPUKU”
HXXS is an experimental electronic duo comprised of members Jeannie Colleene and Gavin Neves. This year the pair signed to Captured Tracks and released their MKDRONE EP via the label. “Seppuku” is named after a Japanese form of suicide by disembowelment, and the track is a feverish display of the duo’s loop-based, hardware-driven electronics. The video for the cut was directed by Anders Ericsson, and it often echoes the duo’s looped sound using animated, GIF-like imagery. Full of shuddering stutters and flickering stops-and-starts, Ericsson’s video catches Colleene and Neves in various moments of off-handed repose and contorted release as they blink and jump in static agitation.
12. Oneohtrix Point Never “The Station”
Oneohtrix Point Never‘s “The Station” began as a demo for Usher, and when that didn’t work out, it morphed into the track included on OPN’s 2018 LP Age Of (Warp Records). Featuring the musician’s Vocodor-processed vocals, with lyrics written by Shaun Trujillo, “The Station” continually confounds the expectations of a lyrically driven pop song. The video for the track was animated by the LA-based illustrator Daylen Seu, and the black and white visuals find two protagonists locked in scenarios of bondage and masochism with an image of linked chains as a main thematic emblem.
11. Moritz Simon Geist “Making Techno with Music Robots”
Moritz Simon Geist is a German-based, classically trained musician that designs and builds robotic instruments. On his 2018 LP Robotic Electronic Music (Sonic Robots Records), these mechanized acoustic devices do all the work. The result is an astonishing brand of techno that accentuates the genre’s machine-driven aspects, as well as its’ acoustic possibilities. Here, you can watch Geist and his musical robots perform the track “Entropy.” Using his Futuristic Kalimba, Pneumatic Hi-hat, mechanically controlled Drone Guitar, and various deconstructed hard drives to create snare and clap sounds, the musician/engineer shows just how these amazing instruments are capable of returning acoustic physicality back into the realms of electronic music.
10. Sidi Toure “Heyyeya”
The highly acclaimed Malian vocalist and musician Sidi Toure released the excellent LP Toubalbero this year via Thrill Jockey Records. This past March the video for “Heyyeya,” directed by Matthew Tinari, set the stage with gorgeous footage that included a horse race at the Club Hippique De Bamako, as well as Toure performing in various locales with his brilliant band. Wide open landscape panoramas, often shot from high above via drone, combine with intimate footage of horse race spectators and participants, while Toure and group beam the kind of radiant energy that makes this video a truly joyous visual experience.
9. Aphex Twin “T69 Collapse”
The mysterious and mostly anonymous video artist Weirdcore has been working with Aphex Twin since 2009 when he first started creating visuals for the musician’s live shows. “T69 Collapse” is an extraordinary example of his glitched and warped vision. Featuring distorted text snippets and computer-generated 3-D imagery of UK locales, including the “Silver Box” in the Elephant and Castle roundabout that James was rumored to have lived in, the video is a wild, beat-triggered ride through their bizarre imagination.
8. Bully “Guess There”
Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland direct Bully’s video for “Guess There.” The duo’s intricately crafted miniatures become tiny stage sets for mollusks as the shelled creatures depict the banal existence of suburban life with slime-trailing abandon. Talking with the design site It’s Nice That, the duo explains that it took hours of delicate work to build and light their sets before adding the mollusks: “We make a scene and hope they are interested in what is around them.? While romantically inclined snails necking on a couch in the TV room is worth the price of admission here, these googly-eyed little guys sure make for compelling viewing throughout.
7. Oneohtrix Point Never “Black Snow”
Oneohtrix Point Never‘s videos are always some of the year’s most interesting. 2018 was no exception with bizarre and cutting edge videos for “Black Snow,” “The Station,” and “We’ll Take It” rounding out the collection. While the musician leaves the directing to Daylen Seu and Nate Boyce/Last Renaissance on the later two, respectively, “Black Snow” finds him handling the honors himself. The video stars a devilish maestro with gnarly teeth, and its’ warped, Western-gone-wrong feel might also make some visual nods towards Devo’s classic “Whip It” video. At least, we’d like to think so.
6. The Legendary Tigerman “Motorcycle Boy”
Part documentary and part music video, James F. Coton and Masato Riesser‘s short film offers a rare glimpse into the slowly vanishing culture of B?s?zoku–the motorcycle gangs that once ruled the roads of Japan back in the 90?s. The Legendary Tigerman‘s “Motorcycle Boy” comes in half way to soundtrack, and it?s a perfect accompaniment with its’ bone throbbing basslines, Garage-infused guitar, and Paulo Furtado?s miles of 50?s-inspired cool.
5. Moaning “Misheard”
Moaning‘s “Misheard” is a delirious pop ode to getting the dreaded relationship “pink slip.” “I wish you’d told me sooner/I already kinda knew,” Sean Solomon sings with slacker aplomb on a track that couples technicolor melancholy with noisy exuberance. LA artist Steve Smith follows suit with an animated tour of 3-D assemblages that combine bio-morphic shapes, dime-store trinkets, warped heads, and dead bees into a stunning and surreal tableau of virtual imagery.
4. Fucked Up “Accelerate”
Fucked Up‘s “Accelerate” burns with a combustible fury of rhythm and noise while singer Damian Abraham‘s fevered vocals push this track into delirious overdrive. Directed by the band’s Mike Haliechuk, the visuals follow suit with a poignant series of metaphoric images portraying a man’s descent into madness at the hand’s of an abusive consumer culture. Tight wire pacing couples with a sharp eye for surreal detail in this video that manages to surprise at every turn.
3. The Chemical Brothers “Free Yourself”
The Chemical Brothers prove themselves more than capable of conquering the next generation of club goers with this instant classic “Free Yourself.” Rave perfect Acid still forms the backbone here, while Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons sound as relevant as ever crafting a euphoric vehicle for their uplifting refrain, “Free Yourself/Free them/Dance.” Directors Dom&Nic follow suit with a brilliant video in which a warehouse full of robots overthrow their human masters with a massive dance party. Dom&Nic wonder: “Maybe we don’t have anything to be scared of, why do we think the worst about AI and humanity?”
2. Father John Misty “Mr. Tillman”
“Mister Tillman, good to see you again. There’s a few outstanding charges just before we check you in. Let’s see here…” Josh Tillman finds himself caught in a self-reflexive loop of eternal return and the burden is existentially crushing. Checking into the Hotel California for the umpteenth time, Misty checks out on repeat with a grand exit off the building’s roof in this wry and cutting edge video from directors Jeff Desom and Carlos Lopez Estrada.
1. Childish Gambino “This Is America”
Garnering over 75 million views in under a week, “This Is America” is a scathing rebuke of our Nation’s long-running history of racism and violence. Donald Glover’s Childish Gambino delivers the goods with an unnerving performance in this Hiro Murai directed video. Seemingly possessed by a host of characters, Glover twitches, flexes, and dances as he enacts this gritty street drama with brilliant physicality. Meanwhile, the video’s harsh truths resonate with brutal intensity making this one of the most unforgettable videos of the year.
