Taken from his recently released and hugely acclaimed Top 5 album ‘The Harmony Codex’, “Beautiful Scarecrow” is a claustrophobic and hypnotic track that acts as a brooding centrepiece of one of the albums of the year.
The video for the track is directed and animated by long-term collaborator Jess Cope alongside Venkatram Viswanathan. Cope previously directed videos for Steven’s tracks “The Raven That Refused to Sing”, “Routine, People Who Eat Darkness” and “King Ghost”. A gothic horror story set in a post-apocalyptic world where a deadly pandemic has led to the human race being divided, with the infected rounded up and forced to live in underground quarantine, Jess’ extraordinary film continues to play on the mind long after the credits have run, showing how a simple gesture of kindness can resonate with profound meaning for years afterwards.
Jess Cope, on making the video, says:
“The video is a completely new approach for Owl House Studios. I wrote the original idea with my partner Jonathan Main and in conjunction with Venky Viswanathan and Shaheen Sheriff, we decided to pursue a 3D animation route. Our aim was to build a computer–generated world but give it the “feel and texture” of a stop motion animation. As always, Steven’s track was so exciting to work with, as the more you listen to the track the more your ears discover. The song has so much depth and richness, it allowed us to freely explore an intriguing visual narrative.”
Watch the video for ‘Beautiful Scarecrow’ – BELOW:
Steven Wilson’s ‘THE HARMONY CODEX’ isn’t like other records you’ll hear this year. Endlessly fascinating, endlessly revealing, endlessly beautiful, ‘THE HARMONY CODEX’ is the seventh album from one of the country’s most singular talents. Over the album’s ten tracks, Steven Wilson navigates a tangle of memories and walks the listener down pathways where shadows cast by reflection, rumination and regret grow long.
This codex is a vivid tapestry conceived and pieced together by an artist working alone in a studio tucked inside the garage of a North London townhouse, with assistance called in from musicians from all around the globe (including long-time studio partners such as Ninet Tayeb, Craig Blundell and Adam Holzman alongside a host of first-time collaborators including Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto and Interpol’s Sam Fogarino). Each player was invited to add their individual stamp to the record. The snares, strings and sampled sounds each artist sent down the wires were woven in to make a trip that evolves over 65 minutes.
While ‘THE HARMONY CODEX’ nods to records from Steven Wilson’s recent past, at times echoing the paranoid rumble of 2008’s ‘Insurgentes’, the crystalline electronics of 2021’s ‘The Future Bites’ and the expansive storytelling of 2013’s ‘The Raven That Refused To Sing (and Other Stories)’, here he has managed to create something entirely unique, a record that exists outside of the notion of genre. ‘THE HARMONY CODEX’ was written, performed and produced by Steven Wilson and is out now across multiple formats.
INTERVIEW: Unlocking The Harmony Codex: A Conversation with Steven Wilson. Listen here.
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