Beck has put out a video for Run Away that was filmed on location in Tokyo, with Tadanobu Asano carrying it. Asano is known outside Japan for Ichi the Killer and more recently for Shogun, and the video follows him through the city on what Rolling Stone describes as a lonely journey.
Casting him is part of a pattern rather than a one-off. Beck used the French actor Denis Lavant for the earlier In the Night video from the same album, so the campaign has twice reached for a performer from arthouse cinema rather than a music-video regular.
Beck explained how the shoot happened in a social media post. "At the end of a long hot summer we went to Japan," he wrote, saying he looked up his friend Kunichi Nomura with the idea of making a video in Tokyo, and that Nomura introduced him to Japanese artists who put the film together with him.
Mikai Karl directed, as he has the other visuals from this record, and the whole thing was shot in Japan with local collaborators rather than a travelling crew. Beck singled Asano out for thanks in the same post, calling him the star of the video.
The video landed on the day Ride Lonesome did. Rolling Stone frames the album as Beck's first in seven years and the third part of a loose trilogy with Sea Change and Morning Phase, and its review describes a record that is hazy and pretty without ever drifting.
A Run Away video is a small thing next to an album, but the choices around it say what the record is aiming at. Two arthouse leads, one director across every clip, and a shoot arranged through a friend rather than a production company is a campaign built to look like the songs.
The parent album is covered in the Ride Lonesome release, and the single that preceded it in the Disappearing Act release. The record sits with the autumn's other rock arrivals on the release calendar.
The facts
- The Run Away video was filmed on location in Tokyo.
- Tadanobu Asano, of Ichi the Killer and Shogun, stars in it.
- Mikai Karl directed, as he did the other Ride Lonesome videos.
- Denis Lavant starred in the earlier In the Night video.
- Beck says his friend Kunichi Nomura set up the Tokyo shoot.
- Rolling Stone calls Ride Lonesome Beck's first album in seven years.
- The magazine places the record alongside Sea Change and Morning Phase.
How this checks out
Single source
Reported by a single outlet
Only one outlet has reported it so far, so it stays a single source.
Cited sources 1
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.