Let Delorean Take You on a Warped, Geometric Acid Trip

Delorean's latest music video, shot by Grammy-nominated director Eric Epstein, makes excellent use of the unique landscape found at Opus 40 Sculpture Park & Museum. "Unhold" starts out normal enough, but soon the sculptural landscape, and the video's star, Chairlift's Caroline Polachek, start to warp, stretch, and sway to Delorean's neo-Cocteau Twins dreampop.

Opus 40 was created by artist Harvey Fite over many decades, who transformed the New York quarry into an almost gothic and geometric landscape. The scenery suits the music well, including the vocals by Polachek, who does her best to channel the Cocteau Twin's Liz Fraser.

For anyone who delights in psychedelic consumption, the swaying of Opus 40 and the unnatural, Pinocchio-like stretching of Polachek's arm will be familiar. Epstein, with his background in animation, is well known for his implementation of trippy VFX wizardry, especially the Memory Tapes video in which a man dissolves in astonishing fashion.

But with "Unhold," Epstein achieves something far more natural in its warped perspective. It almost has the trick photography aesthetic of, say, Michel Gondry without coming off derivative.

“We were looking for an outdoor location to contrast with the studio, with dimensions to make use of the effect we were using,” Epstein said. “The moving footage is resolved to a flat plane, so that everything in relief from that surface skews and stretches.”

Well played, Mr. Epstein. Well played.