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Oct 11, 2016 By Christopher Roberts Glass Animals

British four-piece Glass Animals released their sophomore album, How to Be a Human Being, back in late August via Harvest. Now the band has released a video for the previously shared single “Season 2, Episode 3.” Ashten ‘Whoopi’ Winger directed the clip, which starts with a woman on a couch at first looking for a remote control. When she finds it she’s transported into an old school early ‘90s 8-bit video game, which matches the Nintendo 64 sonics of the song, as well as its lyrics. Later this month the band also intend to release a video game app connected to the video. Watch the video below.

Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley had this to say about the video in a press release: “‘Season 2, Episode 3’ is about that person we all know who sits around all day playing video games, binging on Netflix, ordering Uber Eats, smoking, and basically doing NOTHING. The sonics I put around the song were meant to reflect what she hears and sees every day. TVs going on and off, 8 bit synths, whirling fizzy sounds to represent the haze of pot smoke, vibrato on everything to make it all quite wavy, lyrical nods to assorted psychedelic cartoons.

“I wanted the video to push that idea further, to visualize her world, and then to visualize that feeling we get when we’ve gone too far and spent too much time on a computer and you try to hit ‘undo’ in real life, or when you watch too much Narcos and you start to think everyone around you is a Colombian drug smuggler. I wanted her life to morph into a video game, and for that video game to be playable! And who better to do that than Whoopi!”

Whoopi, a multi-media artist and director, commented: “Dave reached out and expressed how he would love to take the character he created for the single and place her in a video game environment. With that info, I pulled different video game references from our childhoods to implement in the music video. I grabbed references from different video games from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. With that, I was able to create a music video that was new, fun and fresh with a hint of nostalgia.”

In terms of the forthcoming video game app, Whoopi added: “We wanted to be able to give fans of Glass Animals a chance to go beyond the music video with a mobile app that allows them to play music video as a video game from their phones and browsers. The music video is already pulled from all types of retro games, so it’s only right to make it interactive by putting the control of the video into the hand of the fans.”

Previously they had shared the album’s first single, “Life Itself,” as well as a video for the song, and a video for “Youth.” The album is the follow-up to 2014’s debut album ZABA.

Read our review of How to Be a Human Being here.

Pick up Under the Radar’s current print issue to read our interview with Glass Animals.

Glass Animals North American Tour Dates:

October 11 - Paramount - Seattle, WA
October 12 - Queen Elizabeth Theater - Vancouver, BC
October 13 - Schnitzer - Portland, OR
October 16 - The Greek - Los Angeles, CA