Music legend Brian Eno has released his first music video in his 50-year long career for “Decline and Fall,” which is set to be featured on the upcoming compilation album Film Music 1976-2020. This video was directed by Henrique Goldman, who also directed O Nome da Morte (A Man Called Death), a Brazilian serial killer biopic from 2017, which originally featured this track.
“Decline and Fall” juxtaposes religious imagery with sacrilegious murder, intercut with images of a burning forest that ends in decayed ruins by the end of the video. The first shot opens up with a man being buried alive, as he looks through his burial through a translucent glass cross in his coffin. More murder scenes are shown throughout this haunting music video, which closes out with a cryptic line spoken in Portuguese stating: “Wash your mouth out before you speak the name of God.”
This unnerving video matches perfectly with the paranoia Eno creates through his music. The ambient sounds, disturbing shrills and moments of silence build up create a perfect atmosphere of confusion, as it fades into darkness by the end.
“An unforeseen, greedy and merciless force disrupts the divine stream of life. The same force drives the hitman, who stealthily steps out of the shadows to kill for money,” Goldman explained in a statement. “As rain and fire, fiction and science, birth and death, nature and civilisation, art, love and greed continually juxtapose each other, we become aware of the delicate natural balance that is being severely disrupted by our civilisation.”
Film Music 1976-2020 is set to feature Eno’s music from classic films such as 1984’s Dune, Heat, Trainspotting and The Lovely Bones. Eno reissued his collaborative records with John Cale and Jah Wobble earlier this year.
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