Oneohtrix Point Never and the Weeknd's "No Nightmares" Video Will Give You Nightmares

BY Josiah HughesPublished Dec 15, 2020

Oneohtrix Point Never released Magic Oneohtrix Point Never in the fall, but the record has continued to inspire new material. Following the Safdie-directed "Lost but Never Alone" clip, Oneohtrix has now shared a video for the Weeknd-assisted "No Nightmares."

Despite its title, the video is terrifying as hell thanks to director Nate Boyce. Here's what he said of the collaboration:

Dan initially sent me an excerpt of 'Fear of the Inexplicable' by Rilke as a prompt to start working on our idea of a debased animation. Abel and Dan traverse psychoanalytically charged scenarios and spaces that evoke a lurid mix of art and architectural references. Eventually I started to associate the implications of the Rilke poem to the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, an anxiety inducing story I hated as a kid that became a subtext for the latter half of the piece. Despite the fact that Abraham is thwarted by divine intervention, I was terrified by his incomprehensible zealotry and willingness to sacrifice his own child, who I identified with. This story ensured my eventual atheism, but also my ongoing fascination with how these archaic stories, symbols, and motifs have continued relevance even now, and in many ways still structure our experience. So, as it happens in the animation, this process of individuation through archetypal projection starts with heroic ideations that devolve into anxiety and fear, culminating in a carnivalesque mockery of the faith required to confront these fears.

Watch the video for "No Nightmares" below.

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