Part of what I like about modern electronic and dance music is the slight variation on a repetition of a simple theme that builds and builds upon itself to make a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts, an idea that goes all the way back to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. The first four notes of the 5th are probably the most recognizable four notes in all of music history, and what makes them so memorable is that the entire symphony is essentially made up of different variations of those notes repeated again and again. It was a revolutionary idea at the time and it wasn’t initially received very well, but those four notes proved to be the keystone of all modern music.

The reason why I just brought up Beethoven, of all things, is because this video for Bonobo’s “Cirrus” perfectly visualizes exactly what I’m (poorly) trying to verbalize. The entire song consists of one single theme played over and over again, but with minor changes here and there creating a feeling of something building upon itself that is never boring. The video likewise takes random footage from the Fifties and starts to repeat those images over and over, piling them on top of each other into some sort of trippy moving collage. Everything put together makes for a fantastic video that’s extremely memorable.