Make Your Own ‘Manipulator’ Music Video With Ty Segall

September 9, 2014

Prolific multi-instrumentalist Ty Segall has long has a penchant for the psychedelic and now he’s translating that into a new interactive video for his equally psychedelic song, Manipulator, which appears on his latest record of the same name.

Featured on his website, the interactive video allows anyone to assemble their own visual feast to accompany the singer’s fuzztone guitars and vocals. Here the listener can literally “manipulate” visual elements within the frame by clicking on different objects and changing them at their own whim.

Segall has also released a static version of the clip, dubbed a “director’s play-through”, which shows a few of the manipulations available, including swapping aliens with baby heads and turning a boombox into a bed for Segall to sit on.

The clip was directed by Matt Yoka, who met Segall while they were freshmen at the University of San Francisco. Manipulator is their fourth collaboration, and according to The New York Times takes cues from early MTV videos like Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer and various vintage prints.

For the interactive version, they got some help from coder and designer Simon Wiscombe. “The variations multiply to a mind-boggling level of possibilities,” Yoka told the NYT. “Wiscombe estimates there’s a quadrillion different variations you can make.”

Segall will undertake his biggest Australian tour to date this December, while in the country as part of Meredith Music Festival 2014. The headline tour will see the Californian singer-songwriter making stops in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Byron Bay, and Brisbane. See tour dates below.

Also check out the original video clip below, and then lose hours playing with the interactive version, here.

Watch: Ty Segall – Manipulator