On the heels of winning three NME Awards—Band of the Decade, Best British Band and the NME Innovation Award —The 1975 release a brand-new song, “The Birthday Party.” The track is from their forthcoming album, Notes On A Conditional Form, available via Dirty Hit / Polydor.
For the official video, the band once again teamed up with director Ben Ditto and co-director / lead artist Jon Emmony, who worked together on their 2019 video “People.” A dystopian narrative about narcissism, isolation, incel culture and the divisions created by social media, the video questions if there is space for meaningful connections within technology.
“It was truly inspiring to work with The 1975 on this project, combining digital craft with true emotion and a subversive and multilayered narrative,” says Ditto. “Matty and I have a shared fascination with the underbelly of Internet culture and how that impacts modern life, and we looked to address this from several directions and created an engaging and beautiful piece of filmmaking to contain these messages and their performance in a revolutionary way.”
In the short film, lead singer Matty Healy visits Mindshower, a digital detox center, where he encounters a variety of characters – all taken from reddit / 4chan meme subculture – and his band mates. Working with artist Jon Emmony, Mimic Productions recreated The 1975 as digital humans, clad in simulated digital costumes. Detailed 3-D scans – including scans of all mouth movements – were used to create avatars for each member. Body and facial motion capture were utilized to record their performance.
The 1975 are currently on a sold-out UK arena tour. Tonight’s show in Bournemouth will be the first time audiences will see the fantasy worlds depicted in “The Birthday Party” translated in an immersive way for the live shows.
Notes On A Conditional Form is available for pre-order HERE. Fans who pre-order the digital album will instantly receive “The Birthday Party” plus “Me & You Together Song,” “Frail State Of Mind,” “People,” and “The 1975” which features a Greta Thunberg monologue.
