Last month, Villagers released their fifth album Fever Dreams; a paean to human connection, the transporting and hypnotic record hit the Top 20 in the UK charts and garnered praise from across the board. Villagers’ Conor O’Brien saw Fever Dreams as a way of bringing the real and the surreal together.
Ahead of Villagers’ UK & Irish tour next month, O’ Brien is happy to share a very special new video for Circles In The Firing Line. The 6 and a half minute track is the perfect showcase of the music found on Fever Dreams, songs that twist and turn with the magical ambivalence of dreams. The accompanying video for Circles In The Firing Line is an animated odyssey that nods to sur-realistic collage and retro computer games before dissolving into a more liminal, abstract space. It is at once playful whilst filled with sense of foreboding.
On Circles In The Firing Line Conor says: “I like Keats’ concept of “negative capability” which he defines as “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irrita-ble reaching after fact and reason”. This is a song about when our negative capability fails us. I think the internet has a lot to answer for.”
The video director, Rosie Barrett, says: “It was such a joy to team up with Conor again for this brilliant song. From the very first listen I felt this piece really needed to live in another world, and that's what we set out to do. Starting with a green screen process shot by the superb cinematog-rapher, Albert Hooi while also working together with Conor on themes for this dystopian world of doom was a really interesting and fun process.
“For the build, I had the pleasure of working collaboratively with the immensely talented motion designer Cian McKenna on the amazing visual world, accompanied by beautiful animation inside Conor's brain by the brilliant ‘Eat the Danger’, while also having great fun bringing in my own de-sign collage elements made by hand too.”
Alongside their upcoming UK & Irish live dates – which includes 4 dates at Dublin’s Vicar Street, Villagers have confirmed a European tour for January 2022.
2022 live dates
9th January – Burgerweehuis, Deventer, NL
10th January – Trix Zaal, Antwerp, BE
11th January – La Gaîte Lyrique, Paris, FR
12th January – Lantaren Venster, Rotterdam, NL
14th January – Paradiso Noord, Amsterdam, NL
15th January – Doornroosje, Nijmegen, NL
16th January – Muziekgieterij, Maastricht, NL