yuriy norshteyn | fleurmach

Beautiful video by Alexander Petrov set to this anthem, off Burial’s brand new EP, Rival Dealer, out now on Hyperdub. I looked Petrov up because his animation style reminded me of some of the work of another Russian master, Yuri Norstein – and, indeed, he was one of Norstein’s protégés at the Advanced School for Screenwriters and Directors in Moscow.

UPDATE 17/12/13: Looks like the person who put this lovely video together has been forced to take it down for copyright reasons. That’s just wrong. It was truly an inspired combination, and I don’t know how it would have hurt the sales of either the song or the animation. Anyway. You can stream the track without the video HERE.

Still from the Alexander Petrov footage that was paired with the song.

A rare, candid message from the usually silent and mysterious William Bevan, a.k.a. Burial, on Rival Dealer (via Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC radio show):

I put my heart into the new EP; I hope someone likes it. I wanted the tunes to be anti-bullying tunes that could maybe help someone to believe in themselves, to not be afraid, and to not give up, and to know that someone out there cares and is looking out for them. So it’s like an angel’s spell to protect them against the unkind people, the dark times, and the self-doubt.

Astoundingly beautiful animation masterpiece by Yuri Norstein (USSR,1979, 28 min).

From Wikipedia:

Tale of Tales, like Tarkovsky’s Mirror, attempts to structure itself like a human memory. Memories are not recalled in neat chronological order; instead, they are recalled by the association of one thing with another, which means that any attempt to put memory on film cannot be told like a conventional narrative. The film is thus made up of a series of related sequences whose scenes are interspersed between each other. One of the primary themes involves war, with particular emphasis on the enormous losses the Soviet Union suffered on the Eastern Front during World War II. Several recurring characters and their interactions make up a large part of the film, such as the poet, the little girl and the bull, the little boy and the crows, the dancers and the soldiers, and especially the little grey wolf (Russian: се́ренький волчо́к, syeryenkiy volchok). Another symbol connecting nearly all of these different themes are green apples (which may symbolise life, hope, or potential).