New Bodies, the second album from the Sydney-based experimental five-piece Tangents, was named one of our 70 Best Albums last year. Tangents now have a video for its opening track, “Lake George”, and it is an appropriately stunning accompaniment. The video was made by Hospital Hill and the band’s own Ollie Bown, with visual effects done by the Mod studio. Located between Sydney and the capital city of Canberra, Lake George has a reputation as a place of mystery. The water level of the lake has long been subject to continual change; it went dry in 2008, and in recent years has begun to fill again.
The video is built mostly out of drone footage of the area. At times it looks like an abstract painting being given the Ken Burns effect. The song’s many twists and turns are synched with psychedelic digital warps; you’ll want to watch the entire thing for the bending wind turbines at the end. Irritating as drones can be when they’re buzzing over your head in a park, there is no denying that they have been a real gift to music videos. This is definitely one to watch full screen.
More about the video, from the band: “Lake George sits on the road between Sydney and Canberra, and for many years has been completely devoid of water, a vast expanse of perfectly flat grassland gently switching shades of green before hitting hills off in the distance. In 2009, Ollie Bown met Shoeb Ahmad for the first time and shared a coach from Canberra to Sydney during an Icarus tour, meeting Peter Hollo for the first time as well. The lake sat dry as Tangents formed, and during several of the band’s escapades to Canberra. In 2016 it started to fill. The track picks up Tangents’ theme of meditations on powerful local places, here a place that has looked radically different under different natural circumstances. The track stands indulgently sparse, a signature Peter Hollo plucked cello bounces on top of sulky drums, flanked by tiptoeing synth rhythms, stargazing guitar and wandering vibraphones, eventually evolving on a gradual tangent into drenched electronic manipulation, murky bowing, synth motifs and fierce clipping breakbeats.“