There’s a YouTube video for this song that I find pretty fascinating.
It was uploaded in 2011, ten years after the song’s release, by an account called Transferunique. As far as I can tell, this account has nothing to do with Quantic, but since nothing labelled “official video” has been posted for the track, and since the view count of the Transferunique clip is so high, it’s basically the de facto official video.
The video is an uninterrupted shot of a street scene from the early 1900s. The camera appears to be mounted on a streetcar as it makes its way along its arrow-straight route.
I find this video fascinating for two reasons.
First, the footage. The video description reveals that the footage comes from 1906. It’s that brief chaotic period when automobiles, streetcars, horses-and-buggies, cyclists, and pedestrians all shared the same space, without the hassle of traffic lights imposing any kind of order on proceedings. And yet, amid the chaos, the horse and buggy directly in front of the camera appears to be the video’s protagonist, making its way fearlessly forward.
But then, halfway through, that horse and buggy veer off the tracks and eventually disappear. This forces the viewer to consider that they might be the protagonist. It’s a jarring and somehow lonely feeling. Add to this the fact that it was shot in San Francisco, just four days before that city’s devastating earthquake, and the eeriness factor jumps a few notches.
Okay, so the footage is interesting. The second reason I find the video fascinating: the comments.
I’m not normally one to read the comments, because comments sections are not exactly known for their depth of insight. But the comments on this one are generally philosophical waxings on the passage of time: “All of those people, those horses and even those cars are gone. They no longer exist but this video is our only peek into the past.” “When you’re young, you don’t care about time. When you’re older, time doesn’t care about you.”
There’s even one commenter who has come back on New Year’s Day every year since 2018 to wish everyone well and urge them to be good to one another. These annual comments get dozens of replies from people who return just to respond to the New Year’s comment. And here I am, reading back through years of comments, wondering how the intervening years have changed the lives of the commenters, who themselves are wondering how the characters in the video dealt with the earthquake that was just hours away.
I don’t know if time really is the enemy, but it can sure mess with your head.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The main sample, four piano chords, comes from a Lena Horne cover of a Beatles tune, and the piano’s persistent echoing loop helps build the hypnotic mood of the song. Lena Horne, incidentally, lived from 1917 to 2010, covering almost all the time between the filming of the San Francisco footage and Transferunique’s upload to YouTube.
2. The drum sample is metronomically precise, like horse hooves trotting right down the middle of the song.
3. Like the video, it doesn’t really build or take any turns. It just is, until it isn’t.
Recommended listening activity:
Making a video of a walk down your favourite street, and wondering who might see it someday.