Hot Chip - One Pure Thought

What this video is

Released in May 2008 as the third single from 'Made in the Dark,' 'One Pure Thought' arrived at the height of Hot Chip's critical ascent, with the album already generating Grammy-nominated singles. The video exemplifies a significant micro-trend in late-2000s UK music video culture: the commissioning of visual artists and fine art practitioners — rather than traditional video directors — to create animated music…

Why it matters

The video is a landmark example of the fine-art-to-music-video pipeline that flourished in UK indie-electronic culture circa 2005–2012, where gallery artists were invited to create animated worlds for bands. Its rotoscope-plus-Flash methodology represents a technically specific moment in digital…

The director

Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle are British visual artists and collaborators based in Nantes, France, who have worked together since 2004. They studied art at Sheffield Hallam University. Their practice spans sculpture, installation, ceramics, and video,…