Gwilym Gold’s Vision Of A “Greener World” Is An Uncanny, Augmented Reality

Experimental singer-songwriter Gwilym Gold 's recent album A Paradise breaks open at the center with its glowing ballad "A Greener World." Like the titles of both the album and song suggest, it's an uplifting, utopian vision; but among its resonating piano chords and strings is an uncanny, digitized strangeness that seeps even more strongly through its shape-shifting new video (premiering above). "If one song feels like a distillation of the album, then maybe it's 'Greener World,'" Gold told The FADER via email. "It's one of my songs I'm most proud of. I wanted it to feel like a mass of voices leaving an ambiguous emotional state. I think Kevin's video marries with the song really well, it constantly confounds you, creating a sense of a sort of augmented and uncertain reality."

Director Kévin Bray also explained to The FADER how he created that confounding effect, writing that the video is "a reflection on pop music. 'Pop music' in the broadest sense is always aiming to touch the listener on an intimate level, while lyrics are constructed to connect to a wider audience. The idea behind the music video was therefore to look for a way to compensate for this constructed intimacy through true intimacy with the artist. I decided to shoot the music video in Gwilym’s home, asking him to leave it in its 'natural state.' This idea of keeping it 'real' has been extended to what Gwilym was wearing, the lighting and so forth.

"For each scene, both the singer as well as the environment where he performs have been 3D scanned. Scanning a body, by its very nature, generates a rare and private moment between the artist and his audience. The post-production is then built up in order to illustrate the thoughts of Gwilym. His hesitations, his fear. He becomes unstable and unsure of everything, anxious. He is revealing himself, trying to be transparent about his feelings. In the final shot, the camera tilts upwards revealing a green sky, referring to the green screen but also symbolizing this greener world: where everything is created, constructed, simulated, and generated."

A Paradise is out now on Brille Records.