GHOSTLY KISSES' NAMIBIA DESERT CROSSING
BLACKBIRDS: THE DESIRE TO BE FREE
Last January, Ghostly Kisses unveiled Heaven, Wait, their first full-length. An irrefutable success all over the planet: more than 15 million listens since its release and 2 international tours in 2022.
The video for "Blackbirds" is certainly the most ambitious and impressive of the singer-songwriter. The song reveals itself as a hymn to life and death, inevitably linked to each other, a quest for freedom. The dark and airy character of this track, the sustained rhythm, guides the listener towards a world rich in shadows and lights. The sumptuous musical framework of "Blackbirds" slides with finesse into melodies and harmonies inspired by the East and the West, a hybrid instrumentation between tradition and modernity.
Whispers sing through my window
On dreamless days when the light goes
My eyes stray to the clouds way above
See how the blackbirds they fly?
For the artist, the image of the black bird flying away is synonymous with the release of hER pain, as if the answer was in the sky, in abandonment, in the ultimate liberation.
The video, a sort of supernatural pilgrimage through the deserts of Namibia, is the result of a close collaboration between the creative team of Fred Gervais (direction, writing), Kristof Brandl (Jack White, Zedd, Charlotte Cardin) as director of photography, and the production team at Metafilms. The filming took place entirely on location in the four corners of this country with its enchanting panoramas. The special effects were done by the Montreal firm Mathematics, with the help of Studio MELS. The video clip was made possible thanks to the support of the FACTOR fund and Project PDV, a joint initiative of RBCxMusic and the Prism Prize, administered by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.
Words from director Fred Gervais
"Margaux explained to me that Blackbirds was about a tug-of-war between two paradoxically opposed worlds; the darkness inside and the desire to get better. This is the main essence of the video; to reveal the new colors of Ghostly Kisses, without denying her darker past that revealed her as an artist, her primary identity. That's why I wanted the video to be divided into two intertwining parts; a performance by Margaux, and a pilgrimage that takes place in a world of inner ruins. And it is in the desert of Namibia that this visual poem is set."
