Portable Exclusive: Azari & III’s Manic Director’s Cut

By Brodie Lancaster / September 15th, 2011 in Music / London / 761 views

You might’ve already seen the pulsing, gargling sounds of Canadian band Azari & III‘s track Manic set to a jolting montage of video self-portraits and flaming cymbals. The cult band—comprised of underground DJs Dinamo Azari and Alixander III—recruited London-based filmmaker James Henry and production company Love to direct the high-concept video that takes the phrase “tarred and feathered” to whole new levels.

Ahead of this exclusive Director’s Cut release, we spoke with James about his experience working with the group and the process of finding the theme of a song whose emphasis is on beat rather than lyrics.

PORTABLE: How did you come to work with Azari & iii? What was it about them that drew you to the project?
James Henry: The thing that first got me interested in the project was the track itself, which I thought had a great sound and lots of different elements going on within. I was initially sent across a short brief, a picture of the band and the track. The photo itself was a moody black and white shot and that coupled with the track itself made me begin to think about doing something that had some kind of cinematic, dark atmosphere.

Their first music video was banned from YouTube for explicit sexual images. Were there any restrictions (or allowances) on your pitch for this video?
The weren’t any real restrictions—I think the main thing mentioned was that they wanted performance and an interesting concept, and something that felt different from the videos that they has already done.

It’s often difficult to access an emotion in electro tracks lacking in lyrics and melody. How did you go about accessing the root of the song for this video?
For me, the key elements to the track were not just the lyrics and the story they were telling, but also the music itself—the bass line that runs through the song creates a tension that builds through the track, the different drum sounds and the other elements that happen throughout. All of these were a starting point to try and create something that also had a kind of brooding tension and atmosphere. It was taking cues and ideas from the lyrics—Fritz and Starving Yet Full [the vocalists who appear on the track] sing about a ‘sophisticated’ female and a ‘raging addict’ so these two images came to mind immediately… and from there it was working on other strong imagery to surround the video with. I pitched the role of the girl to our model as an almost “midnight horror film heroine”. I was keen to work with strong graphic compositions to create a stylised, modern feel and look. I wanted the grade to enhance this too.

What’s different in your approaches to music and fashion videos? What’s similar?
I think the main differences are the way in which the ideas are conceived; obviously with a music video you have the track first and you have to come up with an idea that works with the music and its framework, whereas with a fashion film, for example, you can start with an image before considering music. Having said that, I think music is always a good place to start to establish a mood and tone to a project—it has such a major impact on how the piece itself works and can help make or break work.