NEW! See and hear more from Fable

Directed and animated by the supremely talented Matt Hutchings, the Orbiting video perfectly encapsulates the essence of the haunting and ethereal sonic-soundscape of the single. Featuring neon-soaked CGI, the video is reminiscent of the likes of dystopian fiction such as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. Atmospheric, expansive yet somehow still claustrophobic, it’s a sonic and visual representation of mental health itself – trapped, yet lost.

Speaking on the video Fable explains: “I wanted the video to capture a sense of the past year of lock down, with the audience strapped to the camera rails being led through a series of rooms and corridors, transitioning to the next space through a screen and given a feeling of captivity and apathy, but with a connection.”

“Each room is a social/political commentary on some of the inadvertent suffering the lockdown has caused, such as domestic violence and the isolation of the elderly. I also wanted to comment on the world being viewed through the lens of social media, and the echo chamber of algorithmic opinion, by having the side characters in helmets with screen visors”.

Matt and I worked together closely on the look and feel of the animated world; we wanted to subvert the preconceptions of a 3D animation and clash it with dystopian themes that you wouldn't expect to be explored in that medium.” Director Matt Hutchings adds:“Holly [Cosgrove; aka Fable] was very clear with her vision for the video, wanting to drift past different apartments and characters filled with metaphors exploring themes of disconnection and apathy. We decided to adopt an animated CG art style for the video, introducing a high contrast, neon-lit aesthetic to help sell the gritty theme of the song. A challenge we had to overcome was animating the faces of all of the side characters, so the solution was to place helmets on all of them, removing their identity, and thus bolstering that sense of alienation whilst overcoming a technical hurdle. I felt it would be a nice idea to bookend the video by having the Fable character end up detained back in the ‘asylum’ from the start of the video, almost promoting the idea that this is an endless cycle - ‘orbiting’, so to speak.”