These New Puritans collaborate with Angelo Pennetta for new MV “Beyond Black Suns”. Featuring a drum kit rising out of a pyramid of flowers, the group’s latest is visually stunning.
Experimental pop band These New Puritans have shared their new video for the single “Beyond Black Suns” following the release of their fourth studio LP Inside the Rose. The video is dark yet visually mesmerising, directed by fashion photographer and filmmaker Angelo Pennetta, accompanied by the track’s haunting vocals and slow pace. It features a drum scene, where a pyramid of wildflowers surround the drum kit, subtle thunderstorms, strobe lights, a hazy pink room, and Taiwanese singer Scintii. According to frontman Jack Barnett, the track is a song “against apathy”. In an article by Dazed, Barnett explains that “[the song represents] optimism in the age of the bored, in a personal way, trying to fight and float above the general onslaught of shit that is 2019”. He also adds that Scintii’s vocals were recorded separately to give it a “strange momentum”, as if she is in “another world”.
George Barnett, Jack’s twin brother and partner in the band, describes Pennetta’s approach as “no bullshit, no pretence, just direct beautiful imagery” after his experience working with the director. “The sets were extraordinary,” George added. “Jabez Bartlett made a one-third-size dystopian flooding model village, a pink neon room that fills with smoke and a pyramid of flowers. It’s something I had experimented with in our live performance, but it was taken to the next level – it half felt like we were making the next Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. We are all wearing Hedi Slimane’s Celine; it’s nice to be back in his armour for this video.”
Additionally, the group announced a special one-off show to go along with the new visuals titled “the Blue Door” in London, scheduled for February 23 next year to perform old as well as new songs from the band. Jack Barnett expressed this upcoming record as an album that “embraces the extremes” of the band’s music, saying that “the stuff that’s pop is more accessible and the stuff that’s more strange or experimental is even more like that, but they coexist at the same time.”