“Murmur” by Elliott Power

With his entrancing new single “Murmur”, London newcomer Elliott Power takes listeners on a beguiling, cinematic excursion through his native city, one which is as sleek as it is unsettling, mysterious even as it is instantly memorable.

“Murmur” is the first fruit borne of a collaboration between the newly reactivated Mo’ Wax label (responsible for seminal acts such as DJ Shadow and UNKLE) and Marathon Artists, and, as far as star-crossed alignments go, they could not be any more perfect, with the single splitting the difference between intoxicating, blue eyed soul and woozily leftfield hip hop beats to dazzling, miasmic effect.
Appropriately, the accompanying video enhances and heightens the song’s sense of urban disorientation and displacement. Directed by award winning filmmaker Toby Dye and using over 25 hours of documentary style footage, it is a strange, stylish trip through nocturnal London which sees Power joined by his producer Dorian Lutz, lynchpin of rapidly ascendant art movement NuBrain. The pair lounge in the back of a car as it speeds through the darkly glittering city with all manner of goings on outside, some mundane some troubling, and some utterly surreal. Through Power’s and Dye’s eyes, London has never looked more eerie, more enigmatic or beautiful.

Quote from Elliot Power:

“The Murmur video is a vessel that shows modern London by night. Myself, James Lavelle & Toby Dye wanted to make something, firstly British (no Mary Poppins, Tom Bowler hats or Breakfast Tea in sight) and secondly cinematic.
James played Toby the song and kept repeating “It’s London, It’s raw and it’s cinematic” Toby had a quizzical look on his face. As he described the song as both “foreign and familiar” with a “nod to the past and a hint of the future”
The video is made up of 25+ Hours of documentary style footage, as it was important to make the video feel authentic as possible. A lot of the shots are by chance, simply being in the right place at the right time.Our loose reference points were a handful of great British music video’s from the 90’s, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Michael Mann’s Collateral.”

Toby said he wanted a nonchalant performance to contrast the fast moving pace of a Dystopian London.

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