Hip hop
The art of the music video is a vastly underrated process. A truly great video elevates the track, catapulting the listener in unexpected and fascinating directions. It is an opportunity for visually based artists to use a musician’s art as a jumping off point for their own creative process, intertwining both their own identity and that of the band. For Noriko Okaku, London and Kyoto based visual artist, her work has been used to adorn some of the most fascinating voices currently producing music, from Vanishing Twin to Rozi Plain.
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Her most recent collaboration is with Bristol based dream pop group Oslo Twins. She uses pastel hues and surreal, often humorous animation to follow singer Claudia in her constant state of running towards. The track, ‘Miss Yesterday’ is a melancholy, wistful song, imbued with nostalgia and hope in equal measure. The story of Claudia in pursuit of an unknown destination, sidetracked by mythical imagery and eventually floating away into the sky in a tongue in cheek finale, elevates the track into a witty and hopeful journey towards the unknown.
We meet with Noriko and the band to discuss how the collaboration came into being on a sunny, clear skied day in Victoria Park. Sitting on the grass and feeling the sun soak into our skin as we chat, it feels like we have been catapulted into the future the protagonist of the track can only dream of. Oslo Twins have recently discovered they are finalists for the Green Man Rising slot, and there is a buzzing excitement about the band. Noriko herself is about to travel to Japan for a residency, and there is a blissful moment of reflection for both artists as they discuss the moment their art was able to intersect.
“I think it was actually our producer that sent us your work” the band’s guitar and synth player Eric reflects. “We really liked it and reached out, I think we saw the Vanishing Twin stuff as well, which was really cool.” “I think we’d probably seen that beforehand,” drummer Luke intersects, “our idea was probably partly based on Noriko’s work… or was I already making the mood board by then?” he wonders. “Maybe it was subconsciously based on Noriko’s work” Claudia clarifies. “I remember there being a mood board, and then you saying I think I found exactly the kind of person we need for this aesthetic.”
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The visuals the band identified with the song were unshakeable from the start. “I think we were looking for something and you fit the brief of what we wanted in the video,” Eric says to Noriko. The visuals of Noriko’s previous works fit what the band aspired towards, as they hoped for something “bright and pastelly” he explains. “Yeah it’s definitely a bright and pastelly song,” Claudia laughs. Visuals are very important for the band, she says, “for me, when I’m writing a song, automatically I am picturing stuff. Even if it’s vague, it just comes hand in hand in my mind. Most of the songs I write, even the ones I co-write, have a kind of colour.”
The track itself is imbued with longing. Written during lockdown, it emerged from a state of isolation and confusion. Eric began the track in Devon, where he had travelled to visit his grandparents and found himself staying. “I ended up being stuck there for I think four months with basically no stuff” he explains. “I set up this little studio in their shed and I didn’t really make anything for a while, and then I started working on this track and thought it sounded kind of cool.” He recorded a clip and passed it along to Claudia, where it continued its DIY journey. “This was like deep lockdown,” she recalls “we weren’t going anywhere. So I didn’t have a microphone, and I recorded the vocals on a voice note on my phone. That’s actually the same vocal track we ended up using on the final mix,” she laughs “which I guess says a lot about Ali ’s production skills, because he managed to make that sound professional.”
The context in which the track was recorded is an important factor in understanding it’s pining nature. “Ali was keen to keep the vibe of the original demo”, Eric reflects, and “the second lockdown started halfway through the recording process” resulting in a rushed and fragmented experience. The lockdown was, however, a positive for the group’s writing. “It probably made us better,” Eric laughs, with Claudia expanding that “I think it made us a bit more disciplined, because we couldn’t think about live shows. We couldn’t think about anything else, we literally just had to sit there and write songs.” Even more so, it liberated the band. “I think that’s what was interesting,” Eric reflects “when we worked on ‘Miss Yesterday’, at least for me, I’d been kind of spamming loads of ideas and trying to get loads of stuff made and none of it was sounding that good. Whereas this track kind of came off the back of really trying those ideas, it all kind of fell together in the right way for that song.”
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For Noriko, the effect of the lockdown is less clear. “I’m sure at some point, in some aspects,” she says “but I’m quite a home person anyway. I remember, I was in London for the first lockdown, and I realised that I hadn’t gone out for three days, and I thought, oh but I’ve done that before anyway, nothing has really changed.” It may not have been obvious in her day to day life “but I’m sure it changed me a lot, because I realised I felt like everything had changed outside. Like, what’s the point of making this if I’m not showing it to people that are interested in it… but after that period, I started feeling it was a good time to reflect on myself, to make sure I knew what I really wanted.”
“I found it kind of similar” Eric responds “it was kind of therapeutic doing it then.” The band had only played two shows prior to the lockdown, so when it happened “I think at that point we could have just given up. But actually it was making stuff like this, doing it remotely and pursuing it because we liked it, that’s what made it work…. I think sometimes you can kind of get pressured into making stuff for different reasons. That was what was good about lockdown, because you were doing it just because you enjoyed it.”
The track itself seems preoccupied with a space elsewhere, constantly pursuing something just out of reach. “The demos felt kind of nostalgic when we were writing it,” Eric recalls “and I kind of wanted the lyrics to reflect that.” Claudia expands, “When I finished the chorus lyrics with him, I guess I was thinking and fantasising about the blue skies of opportunity that could be outside the situation we are in”.
“It’s weird though, because at the time I definitely wouldn’t have said it was written from a place of longing and wanting to do something to get out of lockdown. Maybe subconsciously it was,” says Eric. “Yeah, maybe we’re projecting to be honest, it was so long ago… but I remember writing the verses and thinking it’s sort of saying, we’ve been through so much shit but we’re about to come out of the other side.”
Regardless of the track’s inspirations, its need to be elsewhere was instantly apparent to Noriko, who recalls “as soon as I listened to the music I remember I thought of the image of you running. I was quite impressed to hear how you delivered that image to me.” The artists clicked into an understanding with each other, “it was pretty much exactly what we’d pictured I think,” reflects Claudia, “especially the running,” Eric adds.
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There is, of course, a certain element of trust when it comes to collaborating on art, particularly across formats. “I had this image of you running, running somewhere,” Noriko tells Claudia “and then you gave me some vision boards. So I kind of combined the idea of her running and the question of where she’s running, what the story is that they can go through. The vision board really helped to construct the story.” The board “was a Pinterest” Luke laughingly explains, “ just had kind of colours, and a lot of the stuff we had on it was collage based, which is what attracted us to your work in the first place… once we started working together we kind of leaned into that side more.”
“The song has a certain length” Noriko reflects “and I had the idea that Claudia was running all the way through. When I saw your vision board I liked the idea of these images somewhere within this timeline, and I started to think about what was going to happen in between.” The resultant video is wonderfully surreal and playful, with Claudia haphazardly running through lush nature filled landscapes, under the watchful and often hidden eyes of the rest of the band.
“Everyday circumstance gives me inspiration,” Noriko explains “maybe it’s the same with the record, it’s all about translating you into my language, how I translate you into my language / visuals.” Both Noriko and Oslo Twin’s works are heavily inspired by classical and mythological imagery, apparent in former Oslo Twins tracks such as ‘Circe’ based on Madeline Miller’s novel inspired by the Odyssey character of the same name. “I don’t know if we talked about that very much, but it’s true,” Claudia reflects when the parallels are brought up. “I kind of grew up studying Latin poetry and I really like the poetic style of it. It depicts quite romantic stories in a really elevated way that feels quite timeless, and it’s very close to nature.”
With the foliage heavy imagery of the track, which portrays the pursuit of a sense of freedom as an epic sprint to be elsewhere, it is easy to see why the artists enjoyed their collaboration so deeply. “I just really like how in the video you had human elements in a fantasy world,” Eric says to Noriko. “I think that’s what made it work so well, because you had images of us, rather than just animated versions of us, so we appear to have kind of a divide” from the rest of the art style.
The collaboration has resulted in the band viewing the track in a new way. “I think visuals and stuff are really important,” Eric reflects “it definitely changes the way that things sound, once you’ve attached colour and images to it.” There is also a humour to the track which Noriko’s art style helped to elevate. “I think the video brought a kind of wit to the song,” says Claudia, “because it’s so surreal and we’re slightly, even though it’s from photos of us, slightly cartoonish. Like I fly away into the sky at the end,” she laughs “and they’re all looking quite serious.”
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Words: Eve Boothroyd
