Mark Lanegan Band Release Hallucinatory Desert-Set Video for “Night Flight to Kabul”

The Mark Lanegan band has released a new music video for “Night Flight To Kabul,” off their forthcoming release Somebody’s Knocking out October 18th via Heavenly Recordings. The video stars Mark Lanegan, the band’s eponymous frontman, and was directed by Dean Karr.

This music video was shot in the Salton Sea, in Southern California. Lanegan emerges from a chest at the beginning of the video, which proceeds to spiral into a a hallucinatory landscape, out of something from an apocalyptic film.

“The artistry and genius of Dean Karr is what made this video happen. 5,000 still photographs taken in eight hours were painstakingly put together to give the appearance of a strange wraithlike figure moving weirdly through the desolate landscape of the Salton Sea,” Lanegan stated in a press release. “My third video with Dean in three different decades and I have to say this was the best. The most artistically challenging and satisfying.”

Karr and Lanegan filmed this video on a relatively small budget, and working with an extremely limited crew. The director explained that he shot this on his Nikon D810 DSLR, while only he, Lanegan and Lanegan’s friend Jason Hall worked on the video while shooting in the Salton Sea.

“We had been talking about doing this video for Night Flight to Kabul for a month or two and my only concern was how could I pull this off with such a challenging budget for my friend? Being a photographer before I was ever a director, I decided to use my Nikon D810 still camera for the entire music video and turn it into animation throughout the entire clip. What a simple solution! There’s lots of post work involved, which was done by editor and FX artist Joel Nathaniel Smith,” Karr explained in a press release. ” There’s a lot to be said for the simplicity of working WITHOUT a crew, it was just Mark, myself and a fan of Mark’s (Jason Hall) who drove 3 hours out of his way to meet us at the The Salton Sea, CA to help us shoot a beyond unique video! I think this is one of the freshest looking things out there today and love the ‘melty’ moments, which remind me of doing hallucinogenics back in the day!”

Check out our latest interview with Lanegan here.

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat

Aaron Grech: Writer of tune news, spinner of records and reader of your favorite author's favorite author. Give me the space and I'll fill it with sounds. Jazz, funk, experimental, hip-hop, indietronica, ambient, IDM, 90's house, and techno. DMs open for Carti leaks only.
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