The Safdies have direct­ed a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry video for Oneo­htrix Point Never

Some of the more bound­ary-push­ing film scor­ing work in recent mem­o­ry has been a result of the ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Safdie broth­ers and their com­pos­er of choice, Oneo­htrix Point Nev­er. The man born Daniel Lopatin plunged view­ers into a swirling galaxy of elec­tron­i­ca first with his accom­pa­ni­ment to Good Time and then again with Uncut Gems, a favor that Josh and Ben­ny have now returned.

The dynam­ic duo share direc­to­r­i­al cred­it on the video for the lat­est sin­gle from 0PN, a haunt­ing bal­lad called Lost But Nev­er Alone. Released today, it’s a swan dive into a vor­tex of kitschy video­taped pas­tiche, and a rad­i­cal depar­ture from what­ev­er we may have come to think of as the sig­na­ture Safdie style.

Instead of street-lev­el pho­tog­ra­phy wend­ing around cor­ners and into dingy urban inte­ri­ors, the Safdies have adopt­ed a retro-mish­mash aes­thet­ic harken­ing back to the era of miniDV home movies and low-bud­get local access TV. (Think of the video for Hot Chip’s cov­er of ​‘Danc­ing in the Dark’.)

As if in a pan-and-scanned dream, we zip through footage of an inter­nal­ly tor­ment­ed mon­key, a hood­ed crone in unset­tling pur­suit, and a Fresh Prince-style mul­ti-cam­era sit­com with a green-haired punk in the Will Smith role.

In some respects, the clip calls to mind the Safdies’ pre­vi­ous music video effort for the Good Time sound­track cut The Pure and the Damned, which mem­o­rably opens with a chill­ing com­put­er-ani­mat­ed Iggy Pop approach­ing the cam­era like the ghost from Pulse. They enjoy off-putting CGI, in keep­ing with the psy­che­del­ic drift through a jew­el-turned-colon that opened Uncut Gems not so long ago.

The song itself hews close to the sound of the Safdie albums, sparse­ly punc­tu­at­ed as it is by dis­tort­ed gui­tar and warm buzzes of synth. The solo at the end shreds hard­er than the aver­age 0PN track, too, a release of pent-up frus­tra­tion from a dis­af­fect­ed youth.