The latest video for Flight Tonight’s single Lines ft. Leure somehow captures the pulse of the world’s most electronic city between stripped-back melody, tender bass and enthralling visuals. A collaboration between producer Adrian ‘Edo’ Rafter and photographer Michael Danischewski check out the ACCLAIM exclusive above for a three-minute voyage through Tokyo as you’ve never seen or heard before.
Though relatively new to the scene, with refreshingly crisp and sharp-edged sounds Flight Tonight expertly treads the ground between dance-floor dreamland and headphone-mood music since his first self-titled EP dropped in June and his club-edit version through Bossman Records.
“With my first EP, I made this chilled-minimal vibe stuff to put my own vocals on,” says Edo. “After the edits came out, I went back to working on a whole bunch of new stuff that was more focused on songs and writing electronic music but with vocals and human or natural elements on them.”
Lines features the vocal talents of Perth-based Ash Hendriks, whose solo project goes by the enticing name Leure. Though they’d never met, they curated the track together through e-mail. “I heard Leure when she first released her songs Tired and Waiting on Triple J Unearthed. While I was working on new material I was already thinking about how I would like to have at least one song with a feature of a female vocalist on my release.”
With the rise of one-click-download music it’s exciting to see local producers reaching out to other artists to promote and visualise their tracks. A welcome change from watching the Soundcloud bar dip and swell accompanied by the usual ‘DOPE/blogged at’ comments. As well as working together through shooting Flight Tonight’s first promotional photos, Edo and Michael studio’s share the same block in Melbourne, and after running into each other they planned their next project.
“We first worked together a few months before this video, Edo came to me to organise some artwork for his promotional imagery and from the start it was quite apparent we both wanted to create something outside of the standard,” says Michael. “We knew we both understood each other in regards to imagery. He gave me a lot of freedom to create what I thought fit the music and a month our two after our initial shoot he approached me to start brainstorming for an upcoming release and it just spawned from there.”
Capturing the musicality of Japan with captivating editing, ACCLAIM’s own contributing photographer Michael Danischewski says the city was a natural choice… because of the artificial lighting and heavy population. “I really enjoyed the tempo of Lines so straight away I wanted to work the notion of time into the clip. I decided on a range of time lapses and slow-motion footage. That’s kinda where it started. Because of the previous artwork I had created I also wanted to keep a quite neon-colour palette through parts of the video, not in an over-the-top way but in a way it complimented the music as well.”
With a forthcoming EP from Flight Tonight and a mixed medium show (currently showing at the Peoples Market) and a new zine release from Michael Danischewski 2013 looks a good year for bright, Melbourne talent.
More about Flight Tonight at bookaflighttonight.com
Filmography and Photography by Michael Danischewski