Experimental rock band Primus have released a video for their track “Candyman,” which appeared on 2014’s Primus & the Chocolate Factory with the Fungi Ensemble. According to Loudwire, the album was Primus’s take on the soundtrack for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The creativity and odd sensibilities of the movie and its music are really a great jumping-off point for an experimental band like Primus.
The video is a psychedelic trip in claymation format, with a variety of characters and colors. It starts with a man eating a peppermint candy, which is revealed to be a living candy and thus has to find its way around his insides. Also inside the man is a claymation version of Les Claypool, the bassist and vocalist for Primus. The sound of this cover of “Candyman” is decidedly darker than the one that appeared in the 1970s film based on Roald Dahl’s novel; this one could not be described as jolly. There is even a droning sound that appears throughout, which is embodied visually by a claymation cow. Though the video is colorful and almost childlike with its animation of sweets, it is by no means lighthearted and at times is downright creepy. Watch the full visual below.
Primus previously released a lyric video for their cover of “Pure Imagination” from their 2014 album, which actually shows candy being made in factory with some editing that makes it more hypnotic than that sounds. They also released their cover of “Golden Ticket” shortly before the album came out last year. If you’re interested in getting a deeper insight into the weird workings of Primus after watching their latest video, a Rolling Stone journalist compiled the story of the band into a book in September 2014 entitled Primus: Over the Electric Grapevine: Insight into Primus and the World of Les Claypool.
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