Chemical Brothers – Setting Sun

Tuesday March 16, 2010 · By

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This is another video that had a significant impact on my musical development. Sadly, the main reason it caught my eye (ear) was the involvement of Noel Gallagher. I figured I should try to check out some other Chemical Brothers stuff if they were cool enough to hang out with the guy from Oasis!

Of course, the video itself was strange enough to warrant repeated viewings. I do think I’ve sussed out a plot. In short, our lady friend is reliving a wild night she had at a wild party. She is woken up by the djs at the beginning of the video and begins to make her way home (through the woods, then down some roads). When she gets home, she cleans herself up and watches some telly, which is showing some news coverage of the night before. This triggers a flashback; the red-shirt girl was actually at the party; the yellow-shirt girl is simply there in memory. It ends where it began–passed out at the feet of the Chemical Brothers.

The shot of the camera circling around the dopplegangers, with the music grinding to a halt and the party coming into view in the background, is just amazing. The overall feel of the video matches the music perfectly, but that shot (and sound) in particular has always stuck with me.

And now, some Amp-related digression…

By August of 97, I liked the Chemical Brothers well enough, though I’d probably only heard this track and “Block Rockin Beats” (via Amp). It’s not like there was an entire library of videos to watch on YouTube, and downloading mp3s over 28.8k dialup was not really feasible (not that mp3s had caught on yet… maybe I heard something in Real Audio format). Even the music store at the mall didn’t seem to have anything that wasn’t a $50 “import”.

When I made it to college in the city, I managed to find some other people who were actually into the Chemical Brothers. I was not alone! I got some CDs dubbed to cassette (I didn’t have a Discman) and was in electronic heaven.

Amp had been in repeats all summer, but in November it kicked off a new run with a bang. There was a new video for Elektrobank, which was totally awesome! Also debuting was a new Laurent Garnier video, and an as-yet-unfeatured-on-ELVAD video that was my first exposure to both Aphex Twin and director Chris Cunningham. Two weeks later, I went to my first Chemical Brothers concert, and was hooked for life.

If it hadn’t been for this strange little drug-influenced video (and everything else on Amp), ELVAD would not be here today!