Here Come Butterflies for North Downs

Jack Sibley, spearhead of the North Downs project, explains: “In the last few years, like plenty others, I’ve had my head spun out by the technological advancements in the modern world. Will this be the best or worst thing that has ever happened to mankind? Maybe it’s both. Perhaps our incessant drive to innovate is just part of the natural path to our ultimate evolution. When a caterpillar is building its cocoon, does it know that it will come out of the other side a butterfly?”.

The vision for the music video was to represent the butterfly’s transformation within its chrysalis. North Downs enlisted visual collaborator Jake Mavity to direct the film, who explains, “Jack approached me with not just the banger that is Here Come Butterflies but also an intriguing creative vision too. There seemed to be a commonality with the transformation we underwent everyday via our online, digital lives. So the question was how best to explore what happened inside a butterfly’s cocoon during metamorphosis? How could we peel back the skin and expose the flesh beneath.” 

The duo decided on a strictly in-camera, analogue-type approach, to mirror the visual process to that of the recording process. Mavity continues, “We built a three metre high, mirrored cocoon and then projected imagery we’d shot from an LED floor, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. We also played footage of North Downs performing through various analogue filters, adding effects and pulses organically and instinctively as the track played. It was a wild-pitch acid house mindset and meant there was a degree of uncontrolled rawness that complimented the ethos of the track perfectly.”