Panda Bear - Boys Latin

Ah, Panda Bear. The Animal Collective front-man and Daft Punk collaborator's fifth album, "Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper", is slated for release early next year. The video for the album's second single "Boys Latin" is just as bizarre, trippy and tranquil as Panda Bear's distorted echoing lyricism.

Boys Latin chronicles the story of a young woman out for a hike along a coastal tide pool. Her encounter with a sea anemone triggers a phantasmagorical reaction. She meets a man who seems to be in a similar predicament, and together they start a family of sorts.

Lady on a mission.

The psychedelic coloring and involuntary violent nature of their transformations almost bring to mind comparisons to the 1980 sci-fi thriller Altered States. The gorgeous 2.5-D graphics look positively out of this world.San-Francisco production house Encyclopedia Pictura did a phenomenal job on this video.

Doprah - "Stranger People"

Surreal pop duo Doprah hail from New Zealand, and they seem to be set to make some waves with their very distinct, 'sinister pop' vibes. The eclectic sound of this two person outfit, comprised of John Marr and Indira Force brings to mind the ethereal vocal style that made artists like Bjork so memorable.

The music video though is a different story altogether, offering what appears to be a warped take on Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's already unsettling Ponponpon music video and J-pop tropes in general. The final result could be best summed up as open to your own interpretation. If Doprah's curious sound piqued your attention, you can check out their EP over on their Bandcamp.

"Leucotopia" - Aka One Of The Most Bizarre Animated Shorts We've Ever Seen

A giant blue man driven by headless chickens through the path of life. That's all we were given to go off of when we received Leucotopia, a truly one of a kind premise about a series of chickens attempting to pilot a massive humanoid construct on an alien planet.

There's no explanation given as to why most of the chickens commanding the construct are lacking heads or what the true purpose of their mission is, but ultimately they're forced to realize that they are nothing more than parasites in the grand scheme of things. Directed by Mehdi Louala, Geoffrey Godet, Nicolas Lejeune, Céline Hermann and Simon Legrand, Leucotopia is one trippy journey from start to finish.

Kool AD - "Word" (NSFW)

Former Das Racist rapper Kool A.D. has been at it with music video releases from his 'Word O.K.' mistape, but out of all three of them - Open Letter, Tight and I'm On A Plane, I believe that his newest Word music video takes the cake out the bunch.

Imagining himself as a stoner cartoon dog in a bizarre flat dimension, Kool hallucinates, gets dirty with a whole slew of weird groupies, engages in a shootout with a skeleton policeman and trips his way to hell and back in this absolutely unhinged animated music video directed by Kool and Teddy Vasquez. If you've ever enjoyed shows like Adult Swim's wild SuperJail, this'll be right up your alley.

Tuneyards - "Water Fountain"

Merrill Garbus of Tuneyards channeled her innner fantasy of being part of a retro after school TV special in Water Fountain, which visually resembles a blended up slurry of Peewee's Playhouse and every Nickelodeon Jr. show ever made. The track is fun, schizophrenic affair filled with colorful vignettes and characters, which perfectly accompany the equally quirky indie pop sound.

Director Joel Kefali shared some thoughts: I’d had plenty of ideas for a kid’s show that had been waiting to see the light of day. I didn’t want to make a straight homage piece; there are moments of nostalgia in there but the video is our own modern, manic, collage of a kids show. Like many great kids shows I wanted to cram in as many ideas as possible and sneak in the occasional wink to the art world, contemporary and historic.

Radiation Therapy

Created as a part of a 24 hour animation challenge at Pratt, Radiation Therapy is kind of a blast to the past, reminding me of early experimentation with CG as a medium for entertainment. Perfectly emulating that low poly aesthetic with tons of bizarre post processing (It's all about the ghosting) and neon color choices reminiscent of that era. Radiation Therapy is pretty awesome sauce/tubular, dude. Directed by Wolfshirt, an audio visual group based in Brooklyn, NY, comprised of Mark Fingerhut and Ian Fari.

Sisyphus - "Booty Call"

The three S's - Sufjan Stevens, Son Lux and Serengeti pulled off a Voltron maneuver and teamed up earlier this year to create 'Sisyphus' and release an album. Their first video is a rather racy affair, featuring the trio donning some pretty choice apparel and getting down in a roomful of scene femmes. They shake up the video with some absolutely trippy editing and a fine coating of choice MSPaint aesthetic throughout.

Zodiac - "Evolution"

Directed and composed by Murat Sayginer, who also brought us Ratio last year, Evolution is an abstract short centered around black and white and the concept of duality. It also can be interpreted as a compilation of really awesome abstract visual experiments created using CG. As what we've come to expect from Murat, it's all left open for interpretation. 

Dog Blood - "Chella Ride"

Expect a deliciously retro flavored blast of EDM in this Golden Wolf directed music video for Dog Blood's Chella Ride, a musical collaboration initiated between Boys Noize and Skrillex back in 2012. Mixing a variety of 2D, 3D and cel animation techniques that kind of channel the same visual styles that coexisted with the sound back in the 90's. The theme is centered around a dog astronaut who ultimately succumbs to his paranoia during a lengthy space mission. The track is taken from their new Middle Finger Pt. 2 EP, which is available now on Beatport.

Peppermint

Created for producer Julio Bashmore in collaboration with Jessie Ware, Peppermint is a fun electro music video directed by Noah Harris. The narrative's inspiration was supposedly the evolution of house music, which I guess visually translates into an assload of random but cool stop motion sequences. Other than that kick, clap, hat, snare, repeat.

Storm Jumper

Directed and animated by Malcolm Sutherland, Storm Jumper tells the tale of a solitary shaman sensing the arrival of something terrible to his homeland: A storm of epic proportions that has the potential to bring disaster to the planet he inhabits. In order to counteract this disaster, he transcends his own physical being to get more in tune with the source of this disturbance.

The Moebius/retro bande desinee influence is undeniable here, with Malcolm stating that the late French comic artist has an apartment in (his) subconcious. With a vintage art style and musical quality to this short, it's a pleasant blast to the past.

The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow - A Rather Trippy Animated Feature From Korea

Every once in a while we get a peek at some of the features coming out of the Korean animation market, and I always find myself a little bewildered due to the sheer cultural differences. This Jang Hyung-yun directed feature titles The Sattelite Girl And Milk Cow has some great animation quality (A little reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's house style), and has a story that seems to be inspired by Astro Boy, My Neighbor Totoro and Pinocchio respectively. The story features a satellite who becomes a human, a heartbroken boy that turns into a cow, an angry incinerator, an anthropomorphic toilet paper roll and a human organ trafficker armed with a plunger among it's list of characters..I'm not kidding. After watching the trailer a few times I'm convinced that this is what Hayao Miyazaki's fever dreams are made of.

A pianist-in-training loses his heart and becomes a cow, while, with the help of Merlin (the Wizard, who has taken shape as a role of toilet paper) a satellite felled from the cosmos by a supernova is transformed into a girl. Following a narrow escape from secret agents chasing heartless people, the two mismatched characters draw close.

Well, that sounds absolutely insane. Anyway, there are no current plans for this movie to be distributed in the US just yet. The feature was created by the Korean 'Now Or Never' animation studio, which has been around since 2005.

"Play & Listen To Music" - The Trippiest GIF Remix We've Seen In A While

Created as a musical promo for the collaborative Play & Listen To Gifs website project. The premise is simple, taking existing 80's/90's box art adverts for various toys and boardgames and visually remixing/corrupting them alongside the crunchiest, chippiest Banger tune I've heard in a long ass time.

Curated by Who's Next and directed by Dent De Cuir, I'm guessing that this fun little project might add even more gif remixes as it goes on. As of now the website offers a thanks for checking out the first Listen to Gifs website, which implies that there might be more to come in the near future.

Portrait

It seems like Donato Sansone (aka Milkyeyes) revisited a concept that he experimented with heavily back in August of last year called Untitled, featuring a series of highly grotesque, semi-animated portraits of ethereal entities with glitched out, shifting features. As the video progresses, these portraits continue to break down ever more, until we're left looking at a jumbled mass of unsettling facial features unable to maintain their form.

Coupled with Enrico Ascoli's excellent ambient sound treatment, I get the feeling that Portrait would do extremely well as an interactive installation, a goal that Donato mentioned when he was working on the intial tests a year back.

Cyclope

Animated by Marine Duchet, Cyclope is a tale of deep introspection. Starting off with a young man intently gazing at his own reflection, he ultimately finds himself transported into an alternate reality in which a strange adventure unfolds. Heavy on the surrealism but visually rich, this watercolor styled 12 minute short is a trip into the uncharted realms of the subconscious.

Metronomy - "I'm Aquarius"

The new wave/electro pop outfit Metronomy just recently released a new track from their upcoming album called Love Letters, a follow up to their 2011 album called English Riviera. The Edouard Salier directed music video for I'm Aquarius is a retro tinged trip taking some notes from Kubrick's 2001 and the unforgettable classic scifi Roger Dean illustrations created for Psygnosis back in the day.

Arcadia

 Federico Gutiérrez's Arcadia is a trippy, playful little adventure that he himself dubbed as an 'playful utopia of eternal childhood'. A series of vignettes channel the rich and colorful creative forces of youth, using a medium which mixed analog and digital mediums in a really awesome fashion. Abstract doesn't even begin to define it!

Arcadia was a four week project made with the support of the Digital Culture Center in Mexico City. The film is animated traditionally, colored with markers and composited in After Effects.

The Elephant's Garden

Created as Felix Colgrave's third year animation project at RMIT University in Melbourne, The Elephant's Garden is an indescribably trippy adventure into the darkest recesses of this Aussies artist's brain. A series of increasingly bizarre creatures that inhabit a world held up by elephants do their thing in an otherworldly setting. For being entirely created by one student it's actually pretty impressive considering the five minute run time.

Lumin

Warning - This short contains strobing lights. Created by Mark Wincek, Lumin is an interesting animated short with a narrative driven by an interplay between darkness and light. In a world of darkness a hunter must track and capture his prey under the guise of neverending darkness. The unorthodox style Wincek used makes Lumin look like it was animated using chalk and a blackboard. Unfortunately the short was never quite finished the way he wanted it to be, but we'll be keeping an eye out for his future endeavors.

A lone hunter making ends meet in a world without a sun. He uses light to catch his prey, but unfortunately so do the other creatures.

Mondo Taurobolium

Animator Galen Pehrson takes us on a psychedelic journey in his bizarre video for Taurobolium, conceived in the style of Mondo film (Not the awesome poster company). The 1960's subgenre was characterized by it's themes of exploitation and the taboo, following a sullen duck sauntering his way through an existential rollercoaster ride of fame and disillusionment. Strangely mesmerizing.