Oscar Isaac Hitches a Ride With Trentemoller – Premiere
Though Danish producer Anders Trentemøller has worked with guest vocalists before, his 2013 album Lost is the first to feature indie-rock household names, such as the Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner and Minnesota slowcore band Low, on over half the tracks. One stirring example is the song “Gravity,” featuring Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter, which Trentemøller says was originally supposed to be an instrumental.
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“I was very happy with the chord progression I had come up with on my upright piano in my studio, but the more I worked on the song, the more I also liked the idea to have a human voice,” Trentemøller tells Rolling Stone. “So I thought about Jana Hunter from Lower Dens. I was really happy about their latest album Nootropics, and when Lower Dens one day asked me to remix their track ‘Brains’ I immediately said yes. When I finished the remix we agreed that Jana and I would do a swap deal. Artist to artist! I did the remix for free and Jana would sing on one of my tracks one day. And so it happened. We never met, but did everything via the Internet.”
This exchange of services is reflected in the video for “Gravity,” which follows a besuited man (played by Inside Llewyn Davis‘ Oscar Isaac) as he hitchhikes for a $10 carpool service on a Los Angeles highway. He’s picked up by a businessman, a stoner, and nearly the police, among others, but it’s the charming woman in the Mercedes that comes back for him. Throughout, Trentemøller’s motorik beat chugs as hypnotically as a spinning tire while Hunter’s haunting vibrato soars and dips with Isaac’s highs and lows on the road.
Lost is out now. “Gravity” was directed by Tue Walin Storm and Elvira Lind.