Funk Collective Jungle Prep Debut Album With Joyful New Video ‘Time’
British funk-soul collective Jungle are becoming as well-known for their playful, choreographed videos as their ebullient strain of kitchen sink-inspired funk.
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Last year, the group released the minimalist “Platoon,” a low-budget video that eschewed each member’s face in lieu of 6-year-old B-girl Terra. “The Heat,” featuring members of the UK skate crew High Rollaz, and “Busy Earnin'” would follow, with each of the group’s videos becoming viral hits in their own right. Now, one week before the release of their eponymous debut album, the group have released an equally dance-heavy clip for “Time,” this time trading in youthful breakdancers with two dance veterans.
Co-directed by Oliver Hadlee Pearch, who helmed all of the group’s previous videos, alongside founding member Josh Lloyd-Watson, the clip finds two middle-aged man rising from armchairs to engage in separate bouts of manic, joyful dancing. They eventually link up in a high school auditorium and perform a dance-off that’s equally inspired by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the fight scene in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
Earlier this year, co-founder Tom McFarland explained to Rolling Stone why the band doesn’t appear in their videos. “I’m quite a shy person,” he said. “A lot of new artists feel like they need to be very visible and have an opinion on things. But after years and years and years, after you’ve released great album after great album, that’s when you’ve got your platform to say what you want. With the visual side of things, we just loved the idea of people dancing to our music, and we found some really cool people who could do that incredibly well, in a really rare way.”