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8th May 2015
07:21pm BST
It was their incredibly powerful video which helped propel Hozier's Take Me to Church to worldwide infamy.
Even before that video hit every Facebook wall on the planet, Feel Good Lost had carved out a reputation for gorgeous, abstract music videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSVMgRr6pw
Jape, MMOTHS and AlunaGeorge are just a few great artists who have worked with the company.
When we met, Brendan had just finished work on a narrative video for Gavin James, a video he says is Feel Good Lost’s best yet.
“The second I heard the track I knew it was the song I’d been waiting for to make a video for,” he tells us. “It’s cinematic, it’s emotive… It ticked all the boxes I look for.”
Canty stays true these criteria when it comes to taking on a new project: just before we speak, he turned down an Olly Murs video.
“It’s not that we only we work with alternative artists. I think some of the best directors have worked on pop songs,” he says, citing Martin Thurah, a progressive videographer who’s worked with Will Young. “It wasn’t even the worst Olly Murs song or anything… but I need something with lyrical subtlety, so we can read between the lines a little bit.”
Turning down a pop star of the Murs magnitude as a company that began, just a few years ago, as a bedroom project, is an astounding position to be in. What attracted Brendan to music videos was the fact that there are ‘no limitations’ when it comes to the format.
“Even though budgets were falling (when I started out), it was becoming much cheaper to make videos and to just put something up on YouTube and get some real attention.”
Rather than post videos as a lone wolf director, he decided to create Feel Good Lost ‘like a band comes up with a name’ to define the work. The project has mutated over time, building close relationships with acts like Young Wonder, a band as remarkable for their visual sheen as the their polished electro-pop.
Canty’s visual aesthetic is instantly recognisable: elegant, earthy and awash with emotional allure. It draws much of its power from the Irish landscape. “Our secret weapon was staying in Cork,” the director chuckles. “Everybody says you have to move to London to make it work. I can’t imagine not being a 20 minute drive from the beach, or the countryside - even in our towns, we’re rich with all these potential settings.”
After the global success of Hozier, Canty says that “everybody is looking to Ireland”. Feel Good Lost is an able ambassador: Canty is distilling the beauty of the songs of our most talented musicians and the grace of our extraordinary landscapes into a refined, heartfelt document of the contemporary moment.
Feel Good Lost and Canty complement Jameson, Ginger and Lime perfectly. All three are about taking different elements and combining them to create unique, new and exciting experiences.
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