Music Video: Markus Hofko's amazing new music video for Flying Lotus

It’s always nice when two of your favourite artists are brought together in some way, when one kind of art form inspires another. Great collaborators often produce great work: I’m thinking of Michael Gondry’s music video for Björk, or Dali’s dream sequence for Hitchcock, or Keith Haring painting Grace Jones. So I was very excited to see Markus Hofko, a.k.a the Bow, a.k.a Rainbowmonkey, a New Zealand based graphic designer and digital artist, making a video for Flying Lotus’ shimmering track Phantasm (feat. Laura Darlington).

I first came across Hofko when I saw his glow-in-the-dark cover for Desktop magazine, which transformed everyday household objects into creepy creatures if you turned the lights off. As to be expected, the result of pairing Hofko with the otherworldly sounds of Flying Lotus is mind-blowing.

Set in a desert landscape, a hairy creature that looks a bit like the offspring of Chewbacca unravels a Mummy made from constellations – it’s Star Wars meets Antony Gormley meets Chirico meets the rings of Jupiter. The combination of stunning digital manipulation, and a guy crawling about in a rag suit, is humorous, surreal and poignant all at once. The unlikely pair make their brief and dream-like journey through a barren landscape accompanied by Darlington’s haunting vocals and the cosmic soundscape of the track. It’s quite a trip, and you definitely won’t want to come back down to earth. This is a music video not to be missed, and a graphic designer to keep an eye on.