Rah Band - Clouds Across the Moon

What this video is

Released on 18 March 1985 — the same date as Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Welcome to the Pleasuredome' and Tears for Fears' 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' — 'Clouds Across the Moon' entered an intensely competitive mid-80s UK singles market. The song's sci-fi premise (a phone call across interplanetary space during a 100-year war on Mars) reflected the era's technological optimism and burgeoning space-age…

Why it matters

A landmark of UK synth-pop's romantic-futurist strand, 'Clouds Across the Moon' reached No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart and charted across Europe, demonstrating that high-concept science-fiction themes could anchor emotionally resonant pop narratives. The video is a key artefact of the mid-80s UK…

The director

Born July 1950, British artist, director, writer, and editor. Pioneer of the UK Scratch Video movement in the early 1980s. Worked as editor and assistant director for Derek Jarman. His experimental video work was exhibited at MoMA's 1983 video art survey.…