It was certainly apt that Billboard's August 2017 interview with Empire of the Sun frontman Lukas Steele (which marked a full decade since the birth of the Australian electro-glam-pop duo) lavished so much attention on the band's visuals (the make-up, the accessories, the ornate headdresses, etc.). Even when they operated on smaller budgets, the duo's artistic background (Steele formally studied graphic design and multimedia, while Nick Littlemore was experienced in fine art) allowed them to wield elaborate and flamboyant costumes to present a distinctive visual identity. Steele has cited a Chad Atkins quote to sum up their ethos: "People hear with their eyes". What you heard and saw was a seamless juxtaposition of the shiny, futuristic and metallic with old world signifiers of spirituality and prestige (headpieces, face paint, bones, feathers, imperial robes, levitating shamans). Taking cues from David Bowie and Prince, their live shows famously include stunning visuals, vibrantly costumed dancers, and other memorable visual enhancements.
At their best - in early hits like "Walking on a Dream" and "We Are the People", Steele and Littlemore presented cosmic ear-candy wrapped in secular spirituality, offering escapism, euphoria, catharsis and carpe diem messaging in a maximalist blend of pianos, synths, guitars and vocal harmonies. There's hardly any storytelling aspect within an Empire of the Sun song, but there is an over-arching conceit in all of their music videos. The Emperor (Steele) and The Lord (Littlemore) are on an otherworldly and post-apocalyptic quest to travel to all the sun-worshipping peoples and cultures of the world (the Empyreans). Their earliest music videos were thus set in Shanghai ("Walking on a Dream"), Mexico ("We Are the People"), South Korea ("Celebrate"), northern Australia ("Standing on the Shore", the swordfish female dancers appear to reference an Australian Aborigine Creation Myth), Bryce Canyon National Park ("Alive", this was once home to the Ancestral Puebloans) and the San Fernando Valley ("DNA").
The grandeur and surrealism (and production budget) of their visual myth-making reached its peak last year with the music video for "High and Low", the lead single from their third studio album Two Vines. In contrast to their earlier desert and urban settings, the video begins in a lush tropical forest. As a group of people race into the woods, surrealist elements that would make Salvador Dali proud appear: a gigantic eyeball in the moss-covered soil, dalmatian giraffes, delicately elaborate and intricate platforms, spiraling telescopes, physically impossible arches, and floating boulders.
The dual music videos that accompanied their recently released new EP On Our Way Home further the trend, visually taking the band beyond the clouds and our ozone layer (while their musical formula remains largely unchanged). There are floating rocks and marble Poseidon statues in the music video for "Way To Go", but this time most of the trippiness takes place within Steele and Littlemore's heads. Director Nobumichi Asai relied on 3D scanning technology and facial motion capture to deconstruct their faces into kaleidoscopic fragments and spirals that swirl, melt, glisten and explode. The track itself may not be that mindblowing, but it offers a (now-formulaic) dreamy and delightful urgency.
The simultaneously-released music video for "On Our Way Home" is the first Empire of the Sun video with neither Steele nor Littlemore in sight. The song's verses ('True hearts rely on never getting lost in the night') hint at a romantic narrative, but the chorus does not follow through on this promise. The music video takes us to another realm inhabited by blank space and minimalist architecture, where a handsome medieval knight and a fair redheaded maiden with an elaborate sun-inspired headpiece thwart their pursuers and the gaping void between them to reunite, only to find themselves separated by a layer of intergalactic glass. Where does the EotS visual journey go from here? Given that their fourth album is being recorded in the Land of the Rising Sun, we can expect more input from Japanese directors and visual artists - but perhaps the greatest thrill of the journey is the unpredictability of the destination.
