David Bowie Raids Puppet Archive in ‘Love Is Lost’ Remix Clip
After making a string of big-budget videos with high-profile guests for songs from The Next Day, David Bowie pared all the way down to DIY on his latest clip, spending just $12.99 on visuals for the James Murphy remix of “Love Is Lost.” Written, shot and edited by Bowie (with help from his assistant and a friend) in his Manhattan office last weekend, the video features puppets from what a publicist calls “his legendary archive.” And how did they calculate that $12.99 figure? That was apparently the cost of the thumb drive to which Bowie transferred the finished video Monday morning.
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Bowie premiered the clip last night at the Mercury Prize ceremony in England before releasing it online. It’s an unsettling video, perfect for Halloween: the video opens with Bowie at a sink, washing his hands to the sound of sudden applause, before cutting to eerie images of puppets looming in a darkened corridor and cradling each other interspersed with shots of Bowie singing, his ghostly white face illuminated behind what looks like some sort of netting.
Murphy’s “Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix)” appears with another remix and five new studio tracks on The Next Day Extra, a three-CD expanded edition of the album that Bowie first released in March. The Next Day Extra will be out November 5th.
Earlier this year Bowie featured Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard in the religious-themed video for “The Next Day,” while Tilda Swinton starred opposite the singer as he confronted a version of himself in a clip for “The Stars (Are Out Tonight).”