DEEP COVER – SUN ARAW from CatCakes on Vimeo.
I’ve always found the extras in David Lynch’s films to be his most memorable characters of all. You know, the ones who appear for only few seconds — or repeatedly over the course of a film — without any clear-cut narrative reason for being there: the cowboy slipping out of the party at the end of Mulholland Drive, the fireman waving hello to the camera in the opening sequence of Blue Velvet. Most of all, I am thinking of the middle-aged woman in the latter movie dancing Go-Go-style to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” on top of a Cadillac, completely oblivious to the “main action” of the scene in which the Kyle McLaughlin is pounded to a pulp.
Sun Araw’s fantastic new video for the song “Deep Cover” — directed and co-edited by Cameron Stallones himself — seems to take this logic and turn it on its head, removing the narrative entirely and casting the enigmatically gratuitous “cameo types” up front and center. Against a backdrop that screams Hollywood after dark, a beautiful young woman in dark sunglasses swoops sensuously through labyrinth of carnival decorations and flashing red lights; meanwhile, a man tries to scale a chain-link fence that is way too tall to scale — perhaps to reach the woman, but probably not. We consider that the plotting mastermind behind this whole indecipherable scenario — evil or otherwise — may be the man sitting alone in the sinister-looking whitewashed room. When we continue on, however, we realize that it is probably the familiar-looking guy with the mustache hunching over the synthesizer and the smoke-machine; the creepiest part is, Cameron Stallones looks like a man with a design.
Words: Emilie Friedlander
“Deep Cover” was directed by Sun Araw, shot by Brian Davila, and co-edited by Daniel Brantley and Sun Araw.
Tags: Brian Davila, Cameron Stallones, Daniel Brantley, Deep Cover, Sun Araw
damn that track is tight
[...] out Emilie Friedlander of Visitation Rites for more deep thoughts on the Sun Araw video. She dissects the shit out of [...]
Great example of doing something really intriguing on no/low budget. Sun Araw’s music is still a mystery to me though.
[...] not able to immediately identify the song, despite having watched the Cameron Stallones-directed music video several times, and having listened to the album version rather regularly. I think the emphasis on [...]