The video for Beck’s “Round The Bend,” which was created by video artist Jeremy Blake, somehow manages to be even more low-key and glacially paced than the song itself. The images slowly melt together, leaving abstracted, animated washes of bright colors while only occasionally revealing the nature of their form. There are no figures; when the face of Beck appears, it’s only as a two-dimensional representation directly lifted from the art that Blake created for the 2002 album Sea Change. It’s a gorgeous piece, and it’s likely the final music video of Blake’s career–he went missing last week and is now presumed dead.
Police are currently attempting to confirm that a body found nearly five miles off the coast of New Jersey is that of Blake, who disappeared last week following the suicide of his lover Theresa Duncan. Blake was a rising star in the art world, and was scheduled for a major show featuring a collaboration with Malcolm McLaren at the Corcoran Gallery in his native Washington, D.C.
Blake’s association with the music world was not limited to his projects with Beck and McLaren. He was heavily involved in DC’s punk scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and he can be heard performing a piece of poetry at the beginning of the Nation of Ulysses’ 1992 album Plays Pretty For Baby:
[MP3]
Body in ocean thought to be Jeremy Blake’s [LA Times]
Interesting that his relationship with Beck is being touted here, when in fact Blake and Duncan were both convinced they were being stalked by Scientologists, leading them to committ suicide.
Beck of course, being the most prominent one who worked with Blake.
His interstitial artwork for Punch Drunk Love was gorgeous. This is upsetting.