video premiere: Pure Bathing Culture – Dream the Dare

A beautiful and oddly moving hand-drawn 3-D stop motion animation video for one of our favorite songs from Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture's exquisite Moon Tides LP. Director Hayley Morris says of the vid:

During my initial conversation with Dan and Sarah, they were interested in crow/raven related imagery presented within themes of hope. Many mythologies depict the raven as the mediator between life and after-life, a traveler between worlds. Some cultures view the raven as a trickster, the creator of the world, a messenger, or the harbinger of good luck. My motivations were to employ this very loaded character as a muse - the creator and voyeur of my world(s). The bird operates as a gilded vessel of promise and adventure, the mystic with whom we fly.

"Dream the Dare" is a stop-motion animated video which is composed of stylized hand-made paper sculpted puppets and landscapes. I wanted to create a highly stylized world, which is a mixture of delicate organic and geometric shapes. The video was created all in camera and animated frame by frame with hand-drawn projected animations. I worked with Caleb Wood on some of the animations and I wanted these projections to further the life of the world, and to leave the viewer wondering whether the hypnotic patterns are of this world or how the Raven sees it.

Pure Bathing Culture hits the road with the also-great Widowspeak for a fall U.S. tour, starting this weekend.