Tourist - “Illuminate” (Feat. Years & Years) Video

London producer Tourist has shared a video for his Years & Years-featuring track “Illuminate,” which came out last month. The trippy video was animated by Nicolas Ménard and tells a story of sorts in geometric patterns, inspired by experimental Japanese artists like Yuichi Yokoyama and retro video games. We start by following a pair of hands down a series of seemingly unending hallways that are marked by shimmering and fuzzy squares, and things get more chaotic as it continues, adding in colors and some other cool effects. “It’s been a real blast to direct Tourist’s ’Illuminate’ music video. Not only because it’s such a playful, awesome sounding track, but also because Will was keen to jump straight into the weird abstract universe I’d suggested,” Ménard said in a press release. “It’s also been really fun to play with the idea of translating a poem into Korean; a little metaphor for miscommunication in a relationship. I’m looking forward to seeing whether people dig out those cryptic messages..!” You can watch and read some words from Tourist below.

‘Illuminate’ stems from feeling like you’re in the dark in a relationship, it’s about the frustration you feel when you don’t know what you’ve done to upset someone. Olly and I thought that “to illuminate” was a nice visual metaphor about ending that frustration. When it came to visuals, my dream scenario was to animate something for the video, and we were incredibly fortunate to get to work with Nicolas. I implicitly trust his taste and was keen to let him go wherever he wanted with the video. I feel an inherent nervousness when I relinquish control creatively but his interpretation really resonated with me. I keep re-watching the video and seeing things I missed the first time around!