This Music Video Made In An Abandoned Tasmanian Mine Is Awe-Inspring

Nic Hamilton is the artist behind some of the digital age's most exciting music videos, from Bok Bok and Kelela's "Melba's Call" to Hudson Mohawke's "System." I'm a fan of his bleaker early work for London artist Actress, too, so it was nice to see this new video for Melbourne producer Kane Ikin's "Tap Tap Collapse" explore a related theme of decay. Its widescreen sensibility and matrix glitches are echoed in the track's sharp tones and audio dirt.

"Kane and I filmed this in winter 2014 in the post-mining town of Queenstown, Tasmania at the West Lyell open cut mine," Hamilton told The FADER. "We wanted to see this place because of its strange but inevitable history of resource pillaging and huge wealth followed by resource collapse. Now it's almost a ghost town. The large hole in the ground is as interesting to visit as the local ancient forests. I'm interested in its future, its return to nature."

"While I was writing this I’d been thinking a lot about music in terms of physical force and collision," Ikin told The FADER. "Low waves that penetrate your chest cavity and sharp intense high frequencies that can overwhelm and stun. With 'Tap Tap Collapse,' I wanted to write something that reaches a hypnogogic place through continued repetition, but at the same constantly feel like it’s on the precipice of collapse. At the time we going through a heat wave in Melbourne where temperatures had hung around 40c for about a week. After a few days of this I was pretty unhinged from lack of sleep. A lot of which I think, listening back now ended up in the music."

Kane Ikin's Modern Pressure album is out now on Type Recordings.