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Oct 09, 2013 Camera Obscura By Mike Hilleary

Delivering one of the year’s best pop album with their latest record Desire Lines, Camera Obscura have premiered a new music video for their included single “Troublemaker.” Directed by long-time collaborator Blair Young and shot around the band’s hometown of Glasgow the visual is a reminiscent love-letter to vintage British sci-fi television. In a statement by the band’s resident genre expert Gavin Dunbar:

“We tend to make videos on a bit of a tight budget, and when it came to making a new video for ‘Troublemaker’ I was thinking about what summed up the sound of the song: futuristic in an ‘80s way. Then I thought about what would make a video that looked futuristic in an ‘80s way and on a tight budget, and British Sci-Fi jumped out at me.

Some great programs I grew up watching all tended to be made on tight budgets, never as glossy as their US cousins; they settled for a more down-to-earth (or stuck on earth) look. BBC TV’s Doctor Who (50 this year) had its hero trapped on earth to save on space travel for much of the 70s. For the far future, the crew of Blake’s 7spent an awful lot of time in contemporary power stations. Day Of The Triffids’ desolate London streets and deadly plants seemed far creepier than Star Trek ever could. ITV’s The Tomorrow People and Sapphire And Steel were earthbound and concerned themselves with telepathy and time rather than space.

So ‘Troublemaker’ is a tribute to the British Sci-Fi of yesteryear, low budget and futuristic in an 80s way. It’s also a postcard from Glasgow. It occurred to me that cult Sci-Fi classic Death Watch (1980) being filmed in our fair city gave us an opportunity to re-visit some of the shots from there, thirty three years on. We hope we’ve done these shows justice and it recreates a feel that made geeks of so many of us back in the day.”

Click below to watch.

(www.camera-obscura.net)