Ashleigh Ball Sees Faces In Trees For New Video For “Keep On Pretending”
Building off the release of her latest single “Keep on Pretending”, Ashleigh Ball has shared her imaginative music video for the track. You may recognize her as the energetic flute-playing front woman of Hey! Ocean, but she’s established herself as a solo artist as well. “Keep on Pretending” is the third track to preview her upcoming LP, set for release in April.
The new music video taps into the perception phenomenon that Ball has experienced since childhood. “As a kid, I would see faces in everything; the bathtub faucet, the fire hydrant on the corner, the vacuum cleaner, every cloud in the sky,” she shares. Known as pareidolia, Ball experienced the phenomenon more and more, especially in trees. “I started getting to the point where I couldn’t take a walk in the woods without personifying every single tree I passed. I was constantly being followed by these stumps with faces!” she reveals. That’s where the music video comes in.
Lively, colourful and somewhat psychedelic, the video centres on Ball in a dense forest of birch trees as she describes her experiences with pareidolia. “I’m seeing things, I’m seeing faces, they’re in the trees, and it seems that they’re staring straight at me” she sings, and different animated faces appear on the trunks around her. Upbeat to match the tone of the song, the faces flit on and off of the trunks as the video navigates through the forest, each ‘character’ with its own personality on display – sporting sunglasses, grinning, screaming. Kaleidoscope shots and line work further emphasize the lyrics of the track: “keep on pretending that it doesn’t mean anything; keep on pretending that everything’s as it should be.”
“Pareidolia was at one time considered a symptom of human psychosis.” continues Ball. “Do I embrace the madness or keep pretending that it doesn’t mean anything at all?“
Experience the illusion for yourself through the video below:
