TOURIST Reveals Video "Illuminate" featuring Years & Years
Directed by Nicolas Ménard
Annie Mac Presents Tour:
12/05 – O2 Academy – Bournemouth
12/06 – O2 Academy – Bristol
12/13 – Brixton 02 Academy – London
See the series of GIFs on Tumblr showcasing Nicolas’ beautiful hand drawn illustrations.
Tourist recently announced his new single “Illuminate” featuring Years & Years’ vocalist Olly Alexander, further illustrating his skills as a dynamic producer and artist. Illuminate is awash with neon glowing melodies, delivering the perfect backdrop to the hypnotic animated video courtesy of director and graphic artist Nicholas Ménard of London-based animation studio and production company, Nexus.
Watch the video for “Illuminate” here
iTunes: http://po.st/IlluminateYT
Inspired by Japanese graphic artists such as Yuichi Yokoyama and retro games X and 3D World Runner, this fully animated video is set in several surreal worlds where communication is lost and confused heart-break takes over. Tackling themes of love, misunderstanding and the hope of a resolution after a breakup, we watch as our protagonist opens letter after letter, written in a language he cannot understand.
“It’s been a real blast to direct Tourist’s ‘Illuminate’ music video. Not only because it’s such a playful, awesome sounding track, but also because Will was keen to jump straight into the weird abstract universe I’d suggested. It’s also been really fun to play with the idea of translating a poem into Korean; a little metaphor for miscommunication in a relationship. I’m looking forward to seeing whether people dig out those cryptic messages..! Everything was animated frame by frame in Photoshop, with some slight compositing in After Effects, and the editing in Premiere” – Director, Nicolas Ménard
“Will and I have worked closely together to create a visual world for his music. We reset Tourist’s ‘look’ in his previous single ‘Wait’ by moving to simple black and white design and cinematography. With Illuminate we wanted to be bold, expressive and introduce colour into that world. We felt that Illuminate’s vibrant feel naturally lent itself to animation. I’ve been keen to work with Nicolas for a while. His work, whilst being visually striking, manages to covey a fragile human quality. Emotion is fundamental to all Tourist’s work and in particular Illuminate, underneath the brightness is a tender story of love and loss.” -Creative Director, Jake Robinson
“‘Illuminate’ stems from feeling like you’re in the dark in a relationship, it’s about the frustration you feel when you don’t know what you’ve done to upset someone. Olly and I thought that “to illuminate” was a nice visual metaphor about ending that frustration. When it came to visuals, my dream scenario was to animate something for the video, and we were incredibly fortunate to get to work with Nicolas. I implicitly trust his taste and was keen to let him go wherever he wanted with the video. I feel an inherent nervousness when I relinquish control creatively but his interpretation really resonated with me. I keep re-watching the video and seeing things I missed the first time around!” -Tourist
Tourist is currently out on the road in the UK for the Annie Mac Presents tour alongside Lxury and Monki et al. They’ve already hit up Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the tour reaches London’s Brixton Academy on the 13th December.
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