Shynola / Radiohead / Kid A Blips / Multimedia / 2000
In the 1990s and early 2000s Britain enjoyed a cultural resurgence, British music was amongst the best in world and was accompanied by groundbreaking visual works in part due to the relative strength of local infrastructure. Like Central Saint Martins today, in the 1990s other UAL schools were top of their fields as institutions like London College of Printing were producing students to enter into the burgeoning visual fields of art and design. Firms like The Designer's Republic(Warp Records), Farrow Design(Spiritualized, Pet Shop Boys), and Tomato(Underworld) were all intrinsically linked to the music industry and a massive part of their catalogue has gone on to define a generation of British electronic music. An equally notable although slighter lesser known design firm of the era is directing team Shynola. Their film for UNKLE's track Guns Blazing(Drums of Death, Pt.1)(1998) was a partial collaboration with graffiti artist Futura 2000 and Ben Drury(more on that film later) and propelled their career. About two years later Shynola directed a series of shorts,referred to as Blips for Radiohead's seminal, critically acclaimed album Kid A(2000). The blips served as promotional material and made the rounds through various art,television, digital and physical publication circuits. Each Blip featured short bits of music from the album accompanying a mix of film, motion graphics and animation. The compilation excerpt shown here was featured in Gasbook 10;Movement. An .ISO copy can be found here and the entire collection has been backed up on Youtube. You can read more about Shynola's body of work here.
