Joyrider Director Andras Ketzer Has Keane ‘Spiralling’ into a Post-Modern Videodrome

LONDON, October 2, 2008 – Sometimes, a view to the future is aided by a look into the past. "Spiralling," the latest video for Keane, evokes the forward-thinking, high-tech attitude of 80s media, while positioning the band – and the viewer – as a present-day voyeur of sorts. The clip was directed by Joyrider‘s Andras Ketzer, who used iconic stylization and imagery to achieve a vintage feel that reflects the futurism trend of 80s popular culture.

"We sent in the treatment for this and the band loved it," recalls Joyrider EP Spencer Friend. "The track had been released, but the band loved Andras’ idea so much that pushed the record label into doing the video." According to veteran commissioner Dilly Gent (Island/Universal), this was a first. 

The video is a throwback to a vision of the future, if you will, an era in which man was enthused by progress yet feared Big Brother and imagined that TV and robots would take over the world. In fact, Keane’s Tom Chaplin appears (first scanned in 3D, then shown in live action), observing the proceedings – a viewer in the real world, taking in the sights and sounds of the virtual environment, an imaginary factory where all these symbols of the 80′s are being manufactured. The video for "Spiralling" offers a narrative thread that is disrupted throughout by the imagery. One can almost hear the hissing sound of cathode ray tubes as objects cast long shadows in the flickering light of the television screen.  

"We love it," says the band of the new video. "We think Andras has perfectly represented the difference between the idealised dream and the dystopian reality of human existence, which is a theme that runs through the whole of our album."

"The song to me inspires something of a pure melancholy that has been infected with the simple enthusiasm for technology and all things virtual," says Ketzer. "The emergence of the first primitive 3D animations, the dawn of animated TV series, MTV, laser shows, synthesizers and drum machines, it’s all part of this world."

"The cathode ray telly is the embodiment of retro," concludes Ketzer of the video’s central image. "Its robust vacuum tube and the analogue signals it carries feel heavy. They belong to the eighties as much as a painter’s canvas belongs to a romantic artistic age."

Band: Keane
Track: Spiralling
Label: Island/Universal

Video Commissioner: Dilly Gent

Production Company: Joyrider
Director: Andras Ketzer
Producer: Sarah Butterworth
Exec Producer: Spencer Friend
DP: Jonas Mortenson

Art Director: Jenny Selden

3D Animation & VFX: Joyrider: Andras Ketzer, Miha Morozan & Zoltan Kertesz