Join 1stAveMachine director Anthony Dickenson as he assembles 5,000 hand-painted frames into a mesmeric music video for London-based electronic musician Rival Consoles (aka Ryan Lee West). The in-depth BTS starts at 3:00.

Anthony Dickenson: “I’ve been a fan of Ryan’s work for a long time and then he moved in above me. We became friends and at some point I showed him some animation pieces and he asked if I wanted to make a video for “Soft Gradient Beckons” which is such an amazing piece of music.

“I like the parallels with Ryan and how he works, he often annotates his music, I think he’s a very intuitive music maker. I feel kind of the same way about how I work, I don’t really have a sketchbook, I just like to do. I just like to make prints so I always just dive into the final thing.
 

“What began as a personal experiment evolved into a large-scale installation: 11 painted rolls, each 20 meters long, laid out in sequence to reveal the full timeline of the piece.”

 
“The process became its own kind of ritual. Painting each frame by hand over months gave me space to reflect. The piece grew out of a changing period in my life, and somehow it absorbed that energy. It became less about animation, and more about presence.

“Each frame was transferred onto tracing paper, building a rhythmic visual language that mirrors the emotional shifts in the track. The result is a meditative, analogue response to an electronic composition blurring the line between moving image and fine art.

“What began as a personal experiment evolved into a large-scale installation: 11 painted rolls, each 20 meters long, laid out in sequence to reveal the full timeline of the piece. The film’s quiet pulse and slow unfolding invite the viewer into a space where rhythm, decay, and memory take on physical form.”
 
 

 
Artist: Rival Consoles
Label: Erased Tapes Records

Production: 1stAveMachine
Director/Animator: Anthony Dickenson
Editor: Anthony Dickenson
Producer: Milly Upton
Production Team: Jessica Luostarinen, Louis Grzimek
Drone Operator: James Weller
Photographer/Color Grading: Dan Lowe
Post Production Assistant: Will Samuel
BTS: Dan Lowe

Special thanks: The Beams