Watch This: Erica Manzoli's 'Rock Bottom' Music Video
Music videos have been a great place to find animation for decades- stretching back to the likes of Aha's iconic Take On Me and Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. Over the past couple of years even more artists and bands have released music videos; particularly when the pandemic made shooting live-action an impossibility.
Singer-Songwriter Erica Manzoli was one of many creative sorts who was able to make good use of the lockdown- writing and recording her debut EP I'm Okay, I Promise. Alone with her thoughts she turned them into words and music, making the songs act as a diary of that time in her life And when the majority of us were in similar situations it's likely to strike a chord. Manzoli has already had support for her music from Radio Ones's BBC Introducing as well as Wonderland, Notion and more. The four-track EP also includes Erica's first two singles My Best Friend Is A Therapist and Silent Movie.
The track Rock Bottom is accompanied by an incredible video from animator Meg McKenzie. Painstakingly produced using cross-stitch, it has a unique style that makes it stand out from the crowd.
The video takes on a rhythmic quality, as it uses repeated imagery that accompanies the music. Images such as coffee cups, carnivorous plants and impressionistic water are cycled through.
It's produced in Meg's self-taught "free-motion embroidery" technique. Each frame refers to the previous one bit is slightly manipulated each time. The completed embroideries were then scanned in to create the illusion of movement. Stop-motion in all forms takes a lot of work, but Meg's unique choice of medium takes it to a new level. The fact that the song lyrics are also recreated in cross-stitch is just the icing on the cake.
Erica says of the track:
I think when you’re having a hard time, allowing yourself to be vulnerable can be exhausting and it’s tempting not to try at all. Sometimes when I’m completely happy I get anxious that I’m not anxious and wait for something to go wrong. So there’s some comfort in knowing things can’t get worse.”In the second verse I sing ‘I can’t even take a shower, what’s the point when I’m going back to bed’, which I wrote on feeling hopeless and to show the cyclical kind of mindset you can fall into. I feel like basic human self-care is easy to ignore when you’re suffering mentally and that’s the lesser-seen side of depression that people don’t often talk about.”
You can listen to the full EP here.
