I’ve always had a fascination with funfairs / amusement parks, mainly I think because when I was young the yearly arrival of the touring funfair to my village for 2 nights was an even bigger thing than the annual Worm Charming competition – which i know sounds difficult to believe. Visiting Blackpool at the age of 11 seemed like I’d been transported to a futuristic galaxy.
In Linebug’s new video, simply entitled Amusement Park, they consider the visit to the funfair though from a very different perspective, in that similar to squabbling kids at a fairground, humans never entirely seem happy, particularly when it comes to relationships. The scenes portrayed are half comical and half twisted caricatures, but I promise you’ll recognise each situation.
Of course Linebug is a musical and visual collaboration between Danish songwriter Line Bogh (also featured as a solo artist and with her project ‘Songs for Swimming’) and artist Christian Gundtoft. Now I may be wrong here, but Christian seems to have had the most time consuming task here, with 2,500 individually hand-drawn frames comprising that video, so we’ll quote him rather than Line.
“It was interesting trying to distill all the bad relationships I’ve encountered in my life down to a bunch of animated characters. In some ways the material is super depressing, but when you see how grotesque and exaggerated the animations are, you have to laugh at it. At least I hope so, ”
As for the music, well it isn’t quite as an instantly appealing as previous tracks ‘White Lights’ or ‘Isn’t It Love’, but it has grown on me, with typically subtle electronica accompaniment and meandering melody, which does convey a feeling of a couple wandering the amusement park observing the sights and the sounds. And maybe having more attention on the video is a good thing, because it’s just brilliantly created by Christian Gundtoft.
Take a look here.
The song forms part of an EP of the same name, due to be released in June.
Find them on Facebook.