[Video Link] I love this trippy new music video from Sean Lennon’s band, The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger. It looks like it was shot at the Alta Dena, California ranch of the late Colonel Jirayr Zorthian. David and I attended one of Zorthian’s parties years ago and it was exactly like this video. (Side note: Richard Feynman took painting lessons from Zorthian and paid him by giving physics lessons to Zorthian).
The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger (AKA the GOASTT) consists of Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl. Bringing to mind the likes of Tame Impala and the Flaming Lips, who Lennon recently performed with on Letterman, the duo has grown in popularity since we first heard them on “Jardin Du Luxembourg.” This month they release the new album Midnight Sun and today they’re sharing the Rich Ragsdale-directed music video for its song “Animals.”
“It’s a loving spoof of the Source Family, that infamous ’60s cult of polygamous vegetarian hippies. We shot it on 35 millimeter and were inspired by the surrealist aesthetics of Jowdorowsky and Kenneth Anger,” Kemp Muhl tells us. That explanation doesn’t even seem necessary once you see how much the video embraces the playfully strange style of a film like Jowdorowsky’s Holy Mountain (which, incidentally, came to fruition thanks to the support of Lennon’s parents). The whole clip is framed around a massive, cultish sing-along and filled to the brim with surreal special effects, spaceships, and nudity.