It”s hard to tell which is more astonishing: that David Bowie made the video for “Love is Lost” for less than your average dinner for two at McDonalds or that he has all of these creepy things lying around. Actually, it’s definitely the former.
The clip, which premiered at Monday night”s Mercury Prize ceremony in London, works perfectly as a spooky Halloween treat. It features close-ups of Bowie”s face run through various filters, as well as the legend wearing a Bowie mask with blood on it, and other eerie images. It”s all accompanied by hand claps (which fits in with the fact that it”s the “Hello Steve Reich Mix” by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy.) There are also shots of Bowie obsessively washing his hands, which he does with a menacing intensity.
Let”s face it, Bowie doesn”t have to do much to be mesmerizing, but this one seems to have a particularly can”t-look-away factor, especially as he laments over and over “What have you done?” looking tortured. The final shot of the empty bathroom with the faucet still running is especially chilling. It”s truly a case of your mind coming up with much more terrifying thoughts than if the video had shown specifics.
Bowie, along with his assistant and a buddy, made the video last weekend in his Manhattan office, according to a release. They grabbed some puppets from his archive (wouldn”t you love to go through that?) and shot away. The cost was $12.99 for a thumbdrive.
The James Murphy remix of “Love Is Lost” is one of several new studio tracks featured on “The Next Day Extra,” which comes out Nov. 5 and is a companion to Bowie”s sure-to-be Grammy contender, “The Next Day.”
In addition to the the “Hello Steve Reich Mix,” “The Next Day Extra” includes the original 14-song album, a 10-track companion with five new songs and two remixes and a DVD featuring four videos from “The Next Day.”