Django Django’s new single Spirals is an up-tempo song right from the start, made for the radio. For adventurous radio stations at least. The tune kicks off with driving drums, a walking bassline and the kind of elegantly circling synths you might know from Sophie B. Hawkins’ Right Beside You, or Grandaddy’s The Crystal Lake. It combines Django Django’s early sound with that on more recent releases (the latest being two years old).

The same idea goes for the kaleidoscopic, Maxim Kelly directed video that comes with the song. It features repeated images of frontman Vincent Neff spiralling as if in a DNA strand. The image of DNA is used to muse on how the connections we have as humans are stronger than the divisions.

Kelly explains: “The approach was to translate the psychedelic trip through The Victorian technique of the phénakisticope. The visual illusion generated by spinning the disks at the correct speed coupled with the shutter of a camera is both confusing and hypnotic. I was drawn to how the animations flow in and out, drifting and duping the mind and then back again. This felt a lot like the psychedelic experience tome. The challenge was to fuse the old with the modern. The analogue and the digital. Updating and modernizing the technique.”

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Werner Schlosser

I’m a music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Have been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, I developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart. CEO of Werner Bros. tekst | uitleg.