Jonny Ong brings psychedelic soul and trippy visuals together in the music video for his latest track, ‘Chloe’.
Ong grew up in Singapore, and realised his love of psychdelic music in his teenage years. First The Beatles, but soon he branched out and discovered all the music of the late sixties. It was this, too, which inspired him to pick up a guitar and begin to play. It’s appropriate, then, that this latest music video pays homage to the hazy psychedelia of the late sixties with its mandala imagery and trippy, animated patterns.
The first thing you’ll notice about the song, ‘Chloe’, is that motifs of serpentine imagery are intertwined within both the lyrics and the visuals. Comparing a woman to a snake in the verses, the instrumentation also makes use of horns and brass in general, conjuring up images of snake charmers even before you see the visuals. In the video, a woman’s hair tangles up with snake tails, a silhouette swirls around the figure of a woman walking towards the camera. The melding of music and visual is beautiful and subtle, seemingly straight out of the sixties but with a modern edge as Ong updates the vintage sound.
‘Chloe’ once again sees Ong bringing East and West together in his unique mixture of psychedelic folk rock with elements of traditional Singaporean instrumentation and musicianship. His use of the handpan underpins all his music, and the trumpet also places him in the neo-soul tradition. A musician who truly spans cultures, traditions and genres, Jonny Ong is an ever-evolving and enigmatic songwriter whose songs have already captured the ears and imaginations of listeners the world over.