music

TV on the Radio Explains Its Movie

TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone sat down with the New York Times for a video explanation of their movie, a companion piece to their new album, Nine Types of Light, which is out tomorrow, and you can see the video above. (The two also did a “Playlist” for the newspaper’s print edition.) And seeing as all we’d gotten so far on the flick, which is also called Nine Types of Light, was this frantic teaser trailer, it’s nice to get some exposition. Turns out, the movie is ten music videos, one for each song on the new album, made mostly by the band and its friends, and strung together with other random little bits; that means the sad virtual-reality tour of “Will Do” is included, but there is no, as far as we can tell, overarching story line. Malone’s explanation as to why the band went this route is pretty fun: “I think that there’s still a mindset that you have to make do with whatever the budget is for your videos and put it behind the two potential singles, which is some antiquated model of what’s supposed to happen.” Also, this, from Adebimpe: “If you grow up in a DIY culture you can get it together and make something. If you have a pen and a piece of paper and a stapler you can make a book. If you have a copying machine you can be a publisher.”

TV on the Radio Explains Its Movie