Today, The Beautiful Fear (aka Matthew Bannister) has released "The Arndale Whale", the first video and track off of his upcoming double album The Waltz of the Moonshine Blind, due August 28. Having spent time in rehab in 2014, the Brooklyn/Miami-based English producer and musician not only re-connected with himself but also came to find expression for his darker traumas through music. The result is a vulnerable narrative that's raw yet possesses a vast, beautiful, and ethereal sense of sweeping space and depth.
Clocking in at an epic yet tight eight minutes, the debut single "The Arndale Whale" addresses the "question of addiction as disease" and how relapse is often brought on by overwhelming nostalgia. In Bannister's case, it was ignited by returning in adulthood to a certain place, only to discover that one of the anchors of his childhood (the Arndale Whale, located in a British shopping center) had disappeared. Augmenting this memory is the powerful and unconventional video, which premiered with Northern Transmissions and features a highly abstract, collaged narrative constructed from vintage footage and contemporary clips of himself - making it more of a fine art piece rather than a garden-variety music video. The visuals also operate as a flashback, retelling the story of sexual abuse that Bannister experienced at school as a ten-year-old which is still an open criminal case, filed at the Thames Valley (UK) Police Station in 2018. Bannister further elaborates:
"'The Arndale Whale' is about a child, a crime, addiction-as-disease, and how a wooden whale-a childhood anchor- disappeared from a shopping center in the town of Poole, UK. It's about how nostalgia unleashed one buried memory after another and how that ripple effect resulted in a relapse back in 2012. The video is very purposefully not a 'music video'. My intention was to make an abstract short (art) film that is a visual synopsis of the entire narrative (autobiography) of the forthcoming double album."
Reflecting these overarching themes beautifully, the song/video also serves as a primer for the full double album, which dives into the deeper experiences of ego, deceit, guilt, shame, faith, denial, sexual abuse, and ultimately: redemption. Building a rich, contemplative mosaic from the shards of the past into something redemptive is indeed what Matthew hopes that The Beautiful Fear can offer listeners, especially during these times of seemingly insurmountable anxiety.
"The work shows that there is hope. That there is a way to slip outside of the circle, the dance, the charade, the Waltz," Bannister states. "That hope can be for anyone in the circle of self-abuse, whether that be a substance or a relationship."
A gifted creative as well as musician, Bannister's accomplishments include being named one of 'The World's Top Creatives Under 40′ by Wallpaper*, 'Avant Guardian' by Surface, and the creative agency he co-founded has won many awards, including an Emmy®. He is even credited as one of the inventors (along with Michel Gondry) of the concept of 'bullet time' (The Matrix). He has taught at Parsons School of Design, The School of Visual Arts, Cornell University, and the graduate school at Princeton University.
