The Knife: “We Share Our Mother’s Health”
Though it got off to a bit of a slow start, 2006 has been shaping up to be a great year for music videos (though not yet quite as good as 2005), and seeing that Videoteque is now deceased, I’ll be using GWFAS as my outlet for distributing these clips. Deal with it.
The Knife have consistently put out excellent videos, and their newest clip for “We Share Our Mother’s Health” just might be the best of the bunch. This time out they’ve put creative control in the hands of brilliant Japanese animator Motomichi Nakamura, and the result is an absolutely stunning video that is easily one of the best animated music videos of the last five years. The Knife provide the perfect track for this kind of video, but it’s Nakamura’s animation that completely steals the show. It’s got a lot of shit going on and it’s pretty fucked up in general, so I’m not even going to venture a guess as to what exactly the concept or storyline behind this video is, but thankfully Nakamura explains himself in this excerpt, taken from his website:
“The animation starts with a girl that wakes up from a long sleep and starts searching for a sacred apple. At the end of a nightmarish story the girl is able to find her apple but only to discover the real price that she has to pay for it.
This was def. one of the best projects that I have worked on. The band gave me full creative freedom and they were very happy with the result. One of the film’s concepts was to express pain in suggestive ways. Funny thing is that coincidently I had undergone nasal and septal surgery at the beginning of the project, and because of that I was in pain and my nose was still bleeding during the first two weeks of production (sorry for being so graphic…).”
As usual, I’ve got the clip for you in Quicktime-compatible .mov format and I would have it in iPod format for y’alls, but my Quicktime Pro has decided it’s gonna front and refuse to convert it for me, sorry.
Video: “We Share Our Mother’s Health” - The Knife
Director: Motomichi Nakamura
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]
For those music video fans and former Videoteque readers, I’ve got good news. Announcing… MUSIC VIDEO MONDAYS!!! Mondays at Good Weather For Airstrikes will now be chock full of music video goodness; that’s right, you’ll now get at least three or more great music videos every Monday to start the week off right. Holla at your boy.