• News

• All

Nov 14, 2018 By Christopher Roberts The Chemical Brothers

The Chemical Brothers (Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands) shared a new single, “Free Yourself,” back in September. Now they have shared a video for the track. Directing duo Dom&Nic (longtime Chemical Brothers collaborators) directed the clip, which features a revolution at a robot factory, although it’s more of a dance revolution. Watch it below.

Dom&Nic had this to say about the video in a press release: “Why would artificial intelligence behave any different to humans discovering music and dance for the first time?

“We’ve all seen humans dancing brilliantly like robots, we’ve also seen robots dancing brilliantly like robots, but you’ve never seen robots dancing badly like humans. That’s new…

“The Chemical Brothers’ music allows people to get out of their box at a gig or listening to the record - it’s a moment of frenzied abandonment to the music. We wanted to capture that feeling in the idea of an oppressed robot workforce suddenly abandoning themselves to music and fun. It’s robots having fun, robots being silly and robots raving!

“It’s a black comedy and an observation or conversation about the possible future relationship between robots, artificial intelligence and humans. Maybe we don’t have anything to be scared of, why do we think the worst about AI and humanity?

“We imagined a near future where robots had become a sentient underclass and we felt sorry for them and wanted to imagine them finding a way to free themselves, have fun and dance.

“Tom and Ed are the best people to make music videos for, their music always inspires great visual ideas and stories and as artists they are incredibly supportive of the creative vision.

“We just couldn’t have made a film like this without the total commitment and dedication from the VFX team at The Mill, they took it on purely for creative endeavor. It’s our second such collaboration with them on a Chemical Brother’s music video and in both cases, they have had to break new ground in the world visual effects.

“The project took seven months from first idea to finished film.

“It’s tonally completely different to ‘Wide Open’ but again explores a theme of dance and a non-typical version of the human form and we hope people will find it a worthy follow up.

“During the production on this film a cartoon was published in the New Yorker. It showed a couple of robots in a laboratory doing some moves and the quote from the scientist in the picture was ‘it appears they don’t want to take over, they just want to Dance!’ we knew we were on the right tracks when we saw this.”

The Chemical Brothers’ last album was 2015’s Born in the Echoes, which was their first album in five years, although in 2016 they shared a brand new song, “C-h-e-m-i-c-a-l,” as well as a video for the song. “Free Yourself” is out now digitally via Astralwerks.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.