The Band Explains: The Amazing Devil - 'King' (Video)

We speak to Joey Batey from breathtaking London alt-fock outfit, The Amazing Devil on the ideas that bore the enchanting single and video, 'King', taken from the band's new album 'Love Runs'.

The Band Explains:
Where was the video filmed?
The main location was a beach called Kingsgate Bay in Kent. We arrived and for the first time in the shoot it was glorious sunshine, and almost entirely deserted. Working with the two children was a joy, constant running, dancing, telling them stories to keep them going, endless supplies of haribo. After the first few hours, their heads had gone, so the DOP pretty much had to just run ahead and do his best to keep up with them, the director finding any excuse for them to slow down. ‘We can’t enter the cave without the secret key! Find the secret key!’. It brought a sense of adventure, of discovery and spontaneity to the shoot that became completely foundational to the atmosphere of the cut, and more than anything reminded us that all we’re doing is playing make-belief with all this stuff.

The rest was a wood in Wimbledon. Dogwalkers kept nearly calling the police, as all they could see was a tartan man throwing some guy a beating in the pouring rain.

How does the video compliment the song?
We had no budget and wanted to make something that was, if not conducive to the song’s atmosphere, then at least not reductive. It’s imperfect, like much of the album, and a revelry in that imperfection has become foundational to a lot of the band’s work. It might be a rattle bag of images and chords, but its our rattle bag.

Any behind the scenes stories?
We crashed a drone into a cliff.

What is the message the video is trying to convey?
So many people have differing interpretations of the song and it was important to write and script, shoot and cut the piece in a way that didn’t prescribe or proscribe specificity. There are stories within stories, fears and blood and running and hurt, and the priority was that the girls knew what their story was. They knew there was a boy, they knew he was dead, a woman in a red dress was sad and they had to find a box. They very quickly understood, of their own accord, that the fact that someone is dead isn’t, in its own right, a sad thing. What is reason to cry is being forgotten. They clung to that idea, that they were the only ones who could continue telling his tale, the only ones who could remember him, and actually, when energy levels dropped, when feet got tired and the sea got cold and harsh, that idea did more work keeping them going across the rocks than any amount of haribo could ever do.

Interview feature by Karla Harris