Corridor’s ‘Grand cheval’ music video has gorgeous animation from fellow Sub Pop artist Chad VanGaalen

Corridor’s atmospheric ‘Grand cheval‘ gets an animated music video

I am obsessed with anime so, the minute I saw Montreal-based indie rock band Corridor had a new animated music video out on the Sub Pop YouTube channel for their single ‘Grand cheval‘ (‘High horse‘), I was clicking on that sucker fast.

It is, by the way, gorgeous.

Corridor’s ‘Grand cheval’ music video was animated and directed by indie folk rock singer songwriter Chad VanGaalen, who is also signed to the Sub Pop label.

It opens with an alien gatherer wandering around a barren snowy landscape picking strange fruit.

As the snow continues to fall, the man trudges back to his house on a hill where he hangs up his jacket and his hat. A hat that has a long protrusion on the top of it, which allows his one eye to peer out.

Once settled back in his house where it is warm, he opens one of the pieces of fruit and watches as tiny and very odd plants begin to grow. Soon there are small structures growing on the fruit’s surface, along with flowers that open to reveal two eyeballs.

The man begins to water the plants and flowers by licking them and with tears that fall from his eye, until the eyeballs are big enough to pluck. As he plucks them, we see tiny legs underneath them and, as he eats the eyeballs, the legs happily walk along his tongue and into his mouth.

In seconds, two more protrusions grow on the alien’s head and the eyeballs pop out of them.

Corridor’s ‘Grand cheval‘ music video ends with the man looking at a mail-order catalog selling a hat with three protrusions.

Rotoscoping

The animation was created by a technique called rotoscoping, in which a movie is shot first and then traced over to produce an animated sequence. A time-intensive technique that, in many cases, will take an artist several months to create a video of this length.

In the case of this music video, Chad VanGaalen filmed himself wearing a jacket, hat and pants he had sewn himself, and then drew the artwork over the film.

He then rotoscoped over the footage to create the colorful animation.

Corridor’s ‘Grand cheval

Grand cheval‘ is from Corridor’s superb debut Sub Pop album Junior, which was released in 2019.

According to Corridor, the song was written after the band members were approached by an old man in a park who started to talk about poetry and ask for cigarettes.

“When we asked him to leave us alone, he became angry, climbed onto his high horse (Grand Cheval) and became this old demagogue belittling the youth.”

The release of the music video also kicks off an important week for Corridor as the band starts its international tour tonight (March 4th) in Brooklyn, NY at Rough Trade NYC.

Check out all their upcoming concert dates through August 23rd at Sub Pop and, of course, buy Corridor’s album Junior over there as well.

You can also listen to the 10-track album in its entirety on Spotify (widget below). (One of my absolute favorites is ‘Pow). Enjoy!

 

About Michelle Topham

I'm a Brit-American journalist, former radio DJ at 97X WOXY, and Founder/CEO of Leo Sigh. I'm also obsessed with music, anime, manga, and K-dramas. Help!