Photo Credit: Inken Oades (@inkseyes)
By Alissa Arunarsirakul // June 3, 2021
When we first stumbled across Tycho Jones over a year ago, we knew this London-based talent was something incredibly special. The 20-year-old has perfectly managed to capture his introspective personality through his growing discography, so it’s no surprise that his debut mixtape, Tychonaut, has amassed over two million streams on Spotify alone. After months of grueling work, Jones is now ready to bestow upon us the wonderfully intricate video for “Don’t Be Afraid.”
On the “Don’t Be Afraid” video, Tycho Jones shared,
“Edd’s work explores our anxieties around the ecological crisis and extensions through moving image and animation. I immediately felt an affinity with his work and could see the relationship with the themes and narratives within the song.”
Created by artist/director Edd Carr, the “Don’t Be Afraid” video is nothing short of exemplary. Comprised of over 5,000 individual hand-printed cyanotypes, this time-consuming project is a visual representation of the anxiety Jones faced while penning this insightful track. While our rapidly eyes shift between shots of birds soaring to freedom and a meditative Jones relaying the personal lyrics of “Don’t Be Afraid,” we can’t help but appreciate how much work was put into seeing this artistic vision through.
Edd Carr continued,
“‘Don’t Be Afraid’ is a poetic mirror to the anxieties we face, and the vulnerability of attempting to navigate them whilst living our daily lives. The video is printed entirely by hand using the sustainable cyanotype process. The footage blends human with the nonhuman, a city with celestial, and the crisis with the yearn for escape.”