Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light

What this video is

Released in September–October 2008 as the lead single video from Soft Airplane, Chad VanGaalen's third Sub Pop album, 'Molten Light' arrived at a moment when DIY animator-musicians were finding unprecedented global reach via early YouTube and blog culture. VanGaalen's fully self-produced animated videos — conceived, drawn, and scored by a single artist in Calgary — represented an extreme end of the auteur spectrum…

Why it matters

A landmark example of the artist-as-complete-auteur model in music video, 'Molten Light' demonstrates how hand-drawn animation by a solo musician can achieve greater narrative and emotional coherence than big-budget live-action productions. It is a key text in the sub-genre of animated murder…

The director

Chad VanGaalen (born 1977) is a Canadian musician, animator, and visual artist from Calgary, Alberta. Signed to Sub Pop Records, he is known for self-producing his albums and hand-animating his own music videos. He won the Prism Prize in 2015 for his…