Adi Gelbart’s “Weeping Monolith” Is A Mind-Slapping, Bunny-Laden Music Video

Adi Gelbart’s mind-slapping, bunny-laden music video “Weeping Monolith” is exactly what we need right now.

Singing, instrument-playing stop-motion rabbits, dripping paints, felt, and an urban landscape made of wood and found materials, “Weeping Monolith” is a wondrous sensory overload. Visually, it evokes the lo-fi vibe of a 1980s school class project — and I mean that as the highest compliment. Some 300 or so brown rabbit puppets sing, perform, and ‘act’ to the delirious sounds of Gelbart’s instrumental track, a kaleidoscope of avant-garde Eighties synthwave and Raymond Scott on a mushroom bender.

About both the bunnies and production, Gelbart says that he’s “been using those bunnies in my videos since 2013 and they’ve become part of my invented ‘universe.'” He added:

Working with these prefab bunnies makes the work faster. I buy them in a drug store chain whenever they appear, which is usually two months before Easter. By now I have more than 500. They’re cheap and come with a hole underneath so are easy to mount on a stick when I need it. To me, these bunnies bring a mystical vibe with them – I can’t really explain it. I see them not as animals from earth, but more as alien creatures inhabiting another planet or universe.

This particular video took a lot of work though. Two years ago, I had access to a gallery space for two months and used it to build and film the architecture (I love working with wood) and the monolith scenes for the film within the video. Since they’re filmed in stop motion and I’m entirely a one-man team, this took lots of work and back pains. I originally didn’t have a complete story for those filmed scenes, but lately, as I built the smaller sets in my house (the bunny studio and the orchestra), the new scenes and these old ones came together.

A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, composer, filmmaker, and author, Gelbart has spent the past 19 years in Berlin crafting a surrealist universe of sound and imagery. His work spans more than 20 LPs and EPs of bizarre pop music, numerous animated films (often featuring bunnies or vegetables), and the novel Egglike (2018).

“Weeping Monolith” is from Gelbart’s new album, Liquids & Flesh, which was released in April.