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See the National’s Bryce Dessner and Kronos Quartet’s Tear-Jerking ‘Tour Eiffel’ Video

The National, Bryce Dessner, Kronos Quartet, "Tour Eiffel," video

The National‘s Bryce Dessner turned to the Kronos Quartet for a collaborative album that’s out today, Aheym, and the combo’s new video effectively carries out similarly Glass-shimmering aspirations. “Passages” (via Pitchfork) is a short film set to the full-length’s “Tour Eiffel.” The music, written for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, draws on a poem by early 20th-century Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro about the famous Parisian landmark. The 12-minute visual shows rapidly flickering images of a touching journey.

We called Aheym “a nu-composition debut that’s ballsy in its accessibility.” Here’s what directors Poppy de Villeneuve and Alex Braverman say in a statement about the video:

“Upon hearing ‘Tour Eiffel’ we imagined ourselves hurtling at great speeds towards an unknown destination. Inspired by the line within the song from Vicente Huidobro’s original text, ‘My little boy to climb the Eiffel tower,’ we wanted to tell a story of fathers and sons. We traveled with Kim Sanders, a retired Dallas homicide detective, as he took a quiet solo road trip from his home in Texas to the Grand Canyon; a trip he had wanted to take with his son Skipper before his untimely death six years earlier. The resulting film is a rumination on motion, connectivity and loss — a linear journey through space, feelings, and the passage between spiritual realms.”