David Sitek, the guitarist and producer, member of the band TV on the Radio is going solo as ‘Maximum Balloon’ and will release a self-titled album on August 24th.
The Maximum Balloon’s single, ‘Tiger’ makes a large use of electric funky beats, a very dance music song, almost escaped from the 80’s, which does not go too far from what I have heard of TV on the Radio. It features the voice of Aku (and his participation on the video) from Dragons of Zynth, whose Sitek produced the album in 2007.
In the video you just see Sitek in dark glasses and grey suit having fun with red balloons as well as people running through a sea of balloons, while chased by a multicolored Chinese dragon, just to end up disintegrating themselves into balloons.
‘Maximum balloon’ will see the participation of many famous vocals such as those of Karen O, Tunde Adebimpe, Kyp Malone, Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano, Holly Miranda, Theophilus London, and David Byrne.
Balloons have already been used, a lot, and I don’t know what is more obvious, the video being a homage to the Pixar animation ‘Up’ with certainly a maximum of balloons, or the cover of the album, with only one balloon, being a homage to Autumn de Wilde’s video for Son of Sam by Elliott Smith? Anyway it is about a guy carrying or chasing a red balloon.
You can watch the video for the single ‘Tiger’ here: