Ahead of Philip Selway’s new album Strange Dance, due out February 24 via Bella Union, comes this black-and-white music video for one of the album’s tracks, “Check For Signs Of Life.”
The video for Radiohead’s Selway was directed by William Williamson and produced by Uncommon Creative Studio. The piece features a quartet of award-winning dancers and choreographers: Siobhan Davies, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp, Simone Damberg Würtz and Liam Francis. Davies is one of the UK’s most celebrated dancers and choreographers while Damberg Würtz is a leading light of the Rambert Dance Company.
“Check for Signs of Life” comes from an idea Selway had to develop a dance piece over a series of songs, exploring imagined conversations between future and past selves. The music itself is a haunting arrangement which finds Selway musing over where he finds himself in his life and thinking about human connection.
Over a series of rehearsals, director Williamson and DP Adric Watson worked with the dancers to bring the camera into the mix as a fifth dancer, and a one-shot approach became clear, with the video taking the lead from the choreography and setting out to enhance and interpret the work, while not overshadowing the subtle movements.
