video premiere: Dylan Stark – Shelter

On his debut LP Heartland, young Portland producer Dylan Stark utilized thousands of samples from "video games, children’s television programmes, Pokemon, trees growing, glaciers retreating, choirs from the Melanesian islands, the US womens cheerleading championships" and other unlikely sources to create massive, highly emotional, and often cathartic dance music. There is a celebratory vibe to the record, which is embodied by the the euphoric, glowing tropical swells of tone-setting lead single "Shelter", and its vibrant visuals, which Stark shot and directed. He tells us about the song/vid over email:

"Shelter was the first track that came together when I was working on 'Heartland', it was the song that really set the tone for the whole album. I wanted Shelter to play between this racing, nervous feeling and a sense of serene confidence. The first build of the song is filled with a lot of uneasy, clattering drum work so that when it eventually snaps into a very sparse half-time drum beat there is a weighty sense of arrival; like confidently planting your feet on solid ground.

The video mirrors the shifts in the song and switches focuses back and forth between a larger view of nature and a more micro, focused view of the teeming life within those natural surroundings. We had a lot of fun doing a whole slew of elementary school science experiments - like growing crystals or making flowers glow in the dark - and then filming them up incredibly close with a macro lens. The goal was to create textures and colors that almost seemed unreal but were really these simple natural things seen in extreme detail."

Heartland is out April 7 on London's Civil Music. Artwork by Sandy Dooley. You can watch an album teaser here.