Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin released his brooding album Magic Oneohtrix Point Never back in October and it featured some big-name stars. Caroline Polachek lent her vocals on “Long Road Home” and The Weeknd hopped on the dreamy track “No Nightmares.” Following up the album’s release, Lopatin tapped a longtime collaborator to share an animated visual alongside his The Weeknd-featuring track.
Directed and animated by Nate Boyce, the “No Nightmares” visual takes the viewer on a journey through a dream-like state. It opens with a character waking up from a dream and astral-projecting into a different plane of consciousness. The Weeknd makes a brief CGI cameo in the visual, depicting his head as an old-fashioned movie projector.
Speaking about the visual in a statement, Boyce explained the concept behind the visual:
“Dan initially sent me an excerpt of ‘Fear Of The Inexplicable’ by Rilke as a prompt to start working on our idea of a debased animation. Abel and Dan traverse psychoanalytically charged scenarios and spaces that evoke a lurid mix of art and architectural references. Eventually I started to associate the implications of the Rilke poem to the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, an anxiety inducing story I hated as a kid that became a subtext for the latter half of the piece. Despite the fact that Abraham is thwarted by divine intervention, I was terrified by his incomprehensible zealotry and willingness to sacrifice his own child, who I identified with. This story ensured my eventual atheism, but also my ongoing fascination with how these archaic stories, symbols, and motifs have continued relevance even now, and in many ways still structure our experience. So, as it happens in the animation, this process of individuation through archetypal projection starts with heroic ideations that devolve into anxiety and fear, culminating in a carnivalesque mockery of the faith required to confront these fears.”
Watch The Weeknd and Oneohtrix Point Never’s “No Nightmares” video above.
Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is out now via Warp. Get it here.