Science fiction and fantasy in Estonian music videos

This began as a comment reply under Wateva's music video, but quickly expanded into something more.

(all dates are upload dates on YouTube, given here in the dd.mm.yyyy format)

As the comment and this blogpost expanded, I noticed roughly two phases of Estonian music video production.

Based on the songs linked in this post alone, the earlier phase spans the years 2014–2017. Its main characteristic is Estonian nature in a romantic setting, often interlinked with various elements of fantasy, as ancient Estonians were once fond of finding a spirit in each item, even a rock.

Estonian Fantasy and Nature

In 2014, Trad.Attack! released a fantasy-themed production Kuukene / Moon (15.07.2014) with the Moon as the main character in the song and video, filled with flying Estonian berries and greenery (and plenty of fan service :).

In 2015, Kõrsikud released "Tähetolm" ("Stardust") (uploaded on 15.05.2015), with space-based lyrics, including a passage of an 'angel's wings'.

In 2016, the Mother Earth theme was introduced in Kerli's "Feral Hearts" (25.02.2016), which contains strong fantasy elements set in beautiful Estonian nature.

Curly Strings also produced a magical video, one of the few having the Estonian winter as the main character: Hommik (09.03.2016)

A year after that, Trad.Attack! released a beautiful and emotionally risible song and video Säde / Spark (02.04.2017). The video depicts a flying golden spehere (a disco ball) in the dark of the night spreading around magical energy and life across the the nature of my country. As it was, Arthur C. Clarke's quote puts it best: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The same month of that year, Trad.Attack! published Imepuu / Magic Tree (21.04.2017). The pipe sounds are perhaps too imposing at the start. But the video shows the band playing next to a "magical" tree (in Estonia, obv.), with three lights as substitutes for yellow spheres.

In the Summer that followed, Curly Strings dropped "Miks sa murrad mind" (06.07.2017), showing amazing flyover scenes of Estonian nature. No special effects or anything.

Space, science fiction, and fantasy

The second phase presents a generational shift, and so shows productions from people heavily influenced by science fiction. These would be people who got to see the various Star Trek and Star Wars movies and series, Japanese anime, and much more.

This collection totals six Estonian sci-fi music videos, released in what is a very short three-year timespan of November 2018 and September 2021.

• Nublu – tmt (tujud, mitte tunded) (17.11.2018) — the music is the main point, and the lyric video displays a shiny animation of a viewer's point-of-view traversing above the ground of a sphere;
• nublu x Mikael Gabriel – Universum (06.11.2020) — the video (feat. Valdis in a cameo) is shinier than the music, but features both space and a planet suffering various stages of apocalypse;

2021

Alone in the year 2021, Estonian musicians have released four music videos featuring heavy science fiction. (I'm not in any way claiming 'realistic' or 'hard' sci-fi.).

Much of the same energy musically and thematically is cast in their videos: dark undercurrents in music, dystopia, and apocalypse and the Earth (or a random planet) —

• Maarja Nuut & Ruum – Kuud Kuulama (NOËP remix) (01.03.2021)
• Raul Ojamaa – Moonstrk (feat. NOËP) (lyric voyage) (08.03.2021)
• WATEVA ft. Manna - Disposable Society (03.09.2021)

Thematically, "Kuud Kuulama" presents an apocalypse, "Moonstrk" has that same world in a post-apocalyptic setting as a follow-up, and Wateva's "Disposable Society" probably depicts the rebirth of Earth.

And the latest splash:

• 5Miinust – "Koptereid" (24.09.2021) — a dystopian anime cartoon in Japanese style, with car chases, blood and and gore, and a fight between good and evil. Space is probably adjunct to the main themes of the video. I won't link to it due to its adult themes, but it's searchable on YouTube.

In the first three, the dark undercurrents as one of the backing sounds (for fail of knowing a better term) are now characteristic to modern Estonian music, and the use of background undercurrents in contemporary compositions shows the maturity of Estonian-made soundscapes.

I'd noticed a similar trend in 1990s music from mostly the United States, the music of which was then at its very height, and UK and Canadian songs of that same decade, which could have erroneously been construed as having originated in America. So there was a lot of influence to and fro.