Battles - Tonto

OCT 22 2007 · 12:00

Battles - Tonto (2007) Director: Matt Clark & James Medcraft (United Visual Artists) Era: Post-Millennial Experimental Art-Rock (2007) - Peak of math-rock and art-installation video intersection, coinciding with the rise of Warp Records as a curatorial force bridging avant-garde visual art and independent music. Exceptionally high. 'Tonto' is a rare example of a music video conceived entirely as a fine-art installation project, documented rather than directed in the conventional sense. Its quantitative metrics, extreme darkness, minimal contrast, slow pace, low motion, are not production limitations but deliberate aesthetic choices that directly encode the installation's logic into the film. The D&AD Wood Pencil, 2.8M YouTube views, and continued scholarly citation make this a Tier 1 archival object for both music video history and new media art history. Context: Released in late 2007 as a single from Battles' acclaimed debut album 'Mirrored' (Warp Records, May 2007), 'Tonto' arrived at a moment when the convergence of fine-art installation practice and music video production was emerging as a critical and commercial frontier. Warp Records, already associated with artists who blurred electronic, experimental, and visual art boundaries, commissioned UVA, a collective whose practice was rooted in gallery and architectural contexts rather than commercial video production. The choice of a derelict Welsh slate mine as location positioned the video within a broader British industrial-heritage romanticism while also echoing math-rock's mechanical, system-driven compositional logic. The audio-reactive LED installation literalized Battles' reputation for tight rhythmic precision, making the light itself a visual notation system. Director notes: Commissioned by Warp Films, UVA constructed a bespoke LED installation inside a disused Welsh slate mine. Light-responsive pillars were synchronized to Battles' individual instruments, programmed to illuminate on each note. The band performed for an eleven-hour marathon session beginning at sundown; the video combines documentation footage of this performance with time-lapse sequences of the surrounding Welsh landscape. The single cover artwork was also art-directed by UVA from the same shoot. DoP: Crighton Bone. Editor: Nick Lear. Producers: Laura Tunstall Boyd & Mary Burke. The video won a D&AD Wood Pencil award and has accumulated over 2.8 million YouTube views.