Junior Boys – “Banana Ripple” (video)

At first it’s kind of hard to make out what’s going on in this Rollo Jackson-directed clip for Junior Boys’ “Banana Ripple” — it’s all well-lit ice and feverish design work — but in making a video for the full nine-minute-long original instead of some sort of single edit of the song, Jackson gets to explore his visual ideas as thoroughly as “Banana Ripple” does its sonic ones.

The first time I saw a video for “Banana Ripple” it was a fan-made one that set the song to scenes from Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, and that felt about as thematically appropriate as this more abstract work; by which I mean neither the fan nor Jackon is trying to comment directly on the lyrics (good!) but “Banana Ripple” is compelling enough that both start to swell with the same kind of epic melancholy that the song possesses (better!). There’s a 12″ of “Banana Ripple” coming out, but with the original already being the highlight of their new album It’s All True, I’m not sure any of the remixes will be able to improve on it.