Orpheus

The video was directed by Jeff Thomas and filmed in Almeria, Spain. It features the band racing battered American muscle cars through a desert landscape, with a retro video game aesthetic — numbers appear on screen in a style reminiscent of a computer game.

The concept was conceived in a bar in Portsmouth when the director came down to see the band on tour. They wanted something to capture the energy of the song and settled on fast cars with a Mexican vibe, driven by the song’s inspiration.

The shoot was fairly destructive — by the end of filming one of the cars was pretty much totalled on one side, forcing the crew to film the remaining shots from the other side. The cars ended up thoroughly mangled.

Ash on the filming of the video:

This video was made in Almeria, Southern Spain. It’s basically a car chase across the desert with two bandits trying to run us off the road, total Wacky Racers stuff. Intercut with us performing in a dirty biker bar it’s a full throttle sweatfest!

Tim Wheeler on the concept of the video:

”Well, in this video we’re racing some crazy Mariarchi dudes. It’s loosely based on a ‘Gumball Rally’ sort of vibe where anyone can take part in an illegal race. We’re racing these Mariarchi’s and trying to get to the finishing line before we can play and rock out. The whole video’s cut between that and us rocking out.

It was fantastic, basically; flying off to Spain, getting in a car, smashing it up and rocking out! By the end of it the car was pretty much totalled on one side so we had to film the last shots from the other side of the car. The cars were like totally mangled. It was great, we got to drive through barrels of water as well, as you can see later on. The way we’ve got the numbers on the screen is, I suppose, reminiscent of a computer game. But it’s not tied in to any game, unfortunately. But maybe eventually - ‘Orpheus 2004’!

We thought it up in a bar in Portsmouth when the director came down to see us on tour. We needed something to capture the energy of the song and we just thought ‘Fast cars!’ Also we wanted a Mexican vibe because the song’s sort of based on this idea of like a Mexican road song sort of thing. I wrote it after watching this Mexican movie where these two kids go on this road trip with this girl, its a rights of passage kind of thing. So I always thought it had this Mexican flavour, in fact when we first wrote the song it was called “Dirty Sanchez” for a while!.”