Exclusive Premiere: Bony’s Unsettling Stop-Motion Video for ‘Rhythm0’

As an 11-year-old back in Guwahati, songwriter Baidurjya Bhuyan discovered the art of stop-motion animation for the first time, watching popular kids activity series M.A.D. Cut to a decade later, Bengaluru-based Bhuyan, who writes music under the moniker Bony, was watching another influential piece of stop-motion ”“ prog rock band Tool’s 1993 music video “Sober,” made by guitarist Adam Jones.

Bhuyan teamed up with filmmaker Noorhanaz Khatoon and worked on a stop-motion animated video for his song “Rhythm0” in 2017, taking about a year to complete it. Taking inspiration from Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic’s famed 1974 piece of the same name, Bhuyan says he wanted to explore the “paradoxical nature of human beings” and “the identity crisis that an artist goes through.” Working on character design, sculpts, sets and animation with a camera and two reading lamps, Bhuyan says the video also leaves a fair bit open to interpretation. He adds, “I took on some ideas from Assamese folk art, which I tried infusing very subtly in the different masks in the video and Assamese theater, which can be seen in the lighting techniques for some of the scenes.”

“Rhythm0” is the 21-year-old artist’s introduction to his upcoming EP Dead Tree, which will release next year. While Bhuyan has been releasing music since 2015, he’s still finding his footing as a performer in Bengaluru. He adds, “Right now, I go to some open mics in the city and try out my originals from time to time but I do not enjoy performing as a solo musician as much as I’d have hoped to. I am planning to form a band and once we are down with some originals, we will hit the stage.”

Watch the video for “Rhythm0” below.