Video premiere: Tilly VW – Golden Sands
We’re excited to premiere the video for Tilly VW’s new single, Golden Sands, which is out today.
The latest single from the Melbourne artist is a continuation of a new project, following the release of Criteria Killed the Creative last month.
“Golden Sands is about the desolation of reminiscing,” she tells our editor, Bobby, of the new tune. “In other words, it explores a beautiful memory through the lens of disconnection. This idea is explored in the sonic soundscape of the song. The introduction lures the listener in with familiar, nostalgic warmth and simplicity. This feeling is subtly subverted with a key change, and just as the moment has been felt, it slips away. The next time the main refrain is heard, it is in an entirely different context. Throughout the song, the tension between the warm memory and a cold, harsher present is explored.”
Explaining that the song was originally inspired by a poem she loved as a teenager by South Australian poet Nan Witcomb, Tilly says: “She used the most beautiful imagery of slipping sand to describe the desperate final cling to a fading relationship. The image always stuck with me, because sand has similar properties to memory and time. The more you try to hold it tight, the quicker it escapes.”
The video was made in Los Angeles. When asked how she came to make the clip there, Tilly responds: “Friendship! I became friends with Max and Dana, who started Aftermoon Productions when they finished film school. We were having drinks one night and started talking about filming a music video together whilst I was in LA. We didn’t think it would happen, but it all came together the week before I left!”
And she explains that the thinking behind the music video was “exploring the space between people. The idea was to take a typical dancefloor scene and focus on the disconnection of the dancers. While they occupy the same space, it’s clear that they are in different places in their minds.”
Despite being filmed in LA, pretty much all of the dancers you see in the video are young Australian actors. “I bumped into my friend Rosie at a bar on Grandfinal Day, who was in the US doing an acting course,” the musician says. “A few weeks later I called her asking if she and her friends wanted to be in a music video and they were down! It was such a fun night shooting. We were also very lucky with the location – I had heard of a basement in a yoga studio in downtown LA. We shot it at a place called Peace Yoga Gallery which is owned by a woman named Cheri. When she heard about the song she couldn’t believe it was called ‘Golden Sands’ as that was the name of her perfume. So many little coincidences happened that week, that made everything align!”
Watch the video here:
Keep up to date with Tilly VW on Insta.
Interview by Bobby Townsend.
Read our previous interview with Tilly VW here.
