Watch an exclusive mash up of the 2011 Polaris short list nominees!

September 19th, 2011

Tonight’s Polaris Music Prize Gala is sure to include great music and an exciting envelope opening. Grammy winning Arcade Fire going against new artists Austra, hip hop royalty The Weeknd up against folk veteran Ron Sexsmith, and everything in between. One thing is for sure – this Shortlist for the Polaris Music Prize is packed with some amazing talent.

Not only will you see some slow-clap-worthy performances (stream the Gala online at MuchMusic.com tonight starting at 8 pm ET and watch a special broadcast presentation this Saturday at 10 pm ET), but the show will also feature a video from Emmy winning director Josh Raskin.

This video from Academy Award nominee and Daytime Emmy winner Josh Raskin (I Met The Walrus) features music from all the 2011 Polaris nominees, including Arcade Fire, Austra, Braids, Destroyer, Galaxie, Hey Rosetta!, Ron Sexsmith, Colin Stetson, Timber Timbre, and The Weeknd.

Here are a few words from director Josh Raskin: The idea for the music was to take bits of all the nominated albums, cut them up, and make a new song out of them, which turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. I usually make music by finding songs that naturally work together and then chopping them up into something new, but I’m not used to being restricted to ten specific albums, which makes finding natural pairings a lot trickier. But the albums I had to work with ended up being pretty inspiring, so it only took a bit of
romancing before they agreed to make out with each other.

For the video I teamed up with design geniuses Alex Kurina and Justin Broadbent, who’s live video stuff is a bit like a wizard with an overhead projector from space. We took Justin’s usual video rig (a table made out of a TV screen with photos and kittens on top) and we complicated it by adding three glass shelves to hold multiple layers of photos and kittens. We then choreographed a handmade story, mostly out of things that relate to each of the nominated bands, and got 14 of the most talented hands we could find to act it all out in an insane one-take performance that somehow didn’t burn down our studio.

Check out the video below!