[Premiere] Prizes: 'Rumours'

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Photo credit | Sandra Croft

I fucking hate the word “synergy”. It’s something I’ve used in job interviews, business meetings and even casual conversations (eliciting dumb stares from both friends and strangers). And I hate it. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even a real word.

Yet what better a bon mot is there to describe the relationship between the wonderful Jamie Harley’s video creations and the songs that they serve? As usual on TLOBF, anything new from Harley is an event of sorts and we’re honoured to premiere the new video to accompany “Rumours” from one man band Hari Ashurt, known better to you and I as Prizes.

The second collaboration between Harley and Ashurst sees some continuity with the video for “Canada” (which used footage of the Anderson/Lee home movies) with yet more well known footage of another famous and tragic couple used to profound effect.

Selective editing of the 81 Royal Wedding is given the Harley treatment, with an out-of-step pace to match the hypnotising tempo of the song. In Harley’s hands, the lyrics of “Rumours” become an ominous foreshadowing of the fate of Diana; in both marriage and mortality. There’s a somber melancholy through the song reflected in the vaseline-smeared glimpses at an aisle-bound Princess – snatches of footage always showing movement, an unstoppable force pushing the tragic couple through the ceremony and into their respective fates.

“Speed up, don’t you ever stop” sings Ashurst, and we’re instantly taken from that scared, nervous face and transported to the heap of broken bones, blood and hair that lay wrapped round metal and plastic in that Paris tunnel sixteen years later.