Acclaimed Aussie director shoots north and teams up with Darwin rock band Green Stone Garden
After NT’s alt-rock four-piece Green Stone Garden spent several days at Soundpark Studios “down south” in Melbourne recording their debut release, the band felt that it was only fitting that the video clip be shot in their home town, Darwin. So the hooked up with talented Melbourne-based film and TV director Jonathan auf der Heide and created a story centered in the tropical north. Teaming up with a talented local crew of Jesse Gohier-Fleet and Sean Hutton, auf der Heide has woven a bleak story into the music of the first single ‘The Island’ taken from the four-track EP ‘North’.
The story features frontman Mike Meston and eventually the entire band in a tropical post-apocalyptic landscape, showcasing the Northern Territory’s picturesque scenery. The clip is flavoured with a darkness that auf der Heide is famous for and it works to augment the underlying sentiment of the song. Auf der Heide and James Gough (Drummer) had attended school together in Hobart when the pair were teenagers and had stayed in contact from then.
The story is roughly adapted from the 1985 Geoff Murphy film ‘The Quiet Earth’ where a man awakes one morning to find all other humans on earth have disappeared. Meston awakes to find an empty house where a lover seems to have abandoned him, running onto the street and frantically cycling around Darwin it slowly becomes clear that everyone is gone.
Exhausted from searching for any sign of human life Meston collapses onto a beach where he suddenly notices a decaying hand half buried in the sand. Exhuming the body of one person he then notices another, then another. The bodies appear to be dead… but finally breathe back to some semblance of ‘zomboid’ life as the song draws to a close.
See the band playing live on the following dates:
Friday 5 JULY @ FLY BY NIGHT, HOLDSWORTH ST, FREMANTLE, WA
Friday 19 JULY @ BRIGHTON UP BAR, OXFORD ST, SYDNEY, NSW
Friday 26 JULY @ EDINBURGH CASTLE, SYDNEY RD, BRUNSWICK, VIC
Saturday 27 JULY @ WESLEY ANNE, HIGH STREET, NORTHCOTE, VIC
