English indie-rock band alt-J is gearing up for the release of their upcoming album The Dream. Last week, they released their latest single “Hard Drive Gold.”
alt-J’s New Album The Dream Comes Out in February
alt-J started teasing the new album last year with the release of “U&ME” in September, which arrived as the lead single of The Dream. A few months later, they released “Get Better,” the second offering of the album. Now, “Hard Drive Gold” arrives as the latest track off the upcoming album, which is set for release on February 11. The new album will be the follow-up to 2018’s Reduxer.
An Empowering Music Video For “Hard Drive Gold”
“Hard Drive Gold” is an empowering yet daunting song. It shares the story of a teenager’s juvenile fantasy of becoming an overnight millionaire by trading cryptocurrency. “It’s the story of the ultimate childhood fantasy, the schoolboy who becomes a millionaire overnight; and the different interactions he has with people in his life from teachers to neighbors,” lead singer Joe Newman said in a press release. “How ironically you interpret its message is entirely up to you…”
The music video shows a little bit of a different story. It tells the story of an athlete as she hears the news that a natural disaster is coming to her town. She uses her last four minutes alive to nail a pole vault jump.
Newman directed the video with his partner. He had previously choreographed the band’s video for “Deadcrush.” “Growing up enjoying cinema greatly I saw our music videos as opportune moments for directors; to create stories purely and so we the band did not appear in our videos,” he said of his video. “By avoiding cuts to a band playing in an ‘airplane hanger’ the audience could focus on the cinema over the indie band music video tropes.”
He added, “I had ideas for videos that I passed on to directors to develop, watching these directors execute some of these ideas inspired me and now I want to understand and experience the process at a deeper level.”
If you like this song, check out Fireboy DML and Ed Sheeran’s “Peru.”
