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‘Tuna Melt’ music video gets inspiration from Rube Goldberg machine

Sorry A-Trak, but OK Go had the best Rube Goldberg machine music video of all time.

That’s not to say “Tuna Melt,” the recent collaboration between the Canadian DJ and his Australian counterpart, Tommy Trash, is anything to sniff at. On the contrary: it’s pretty damn spectacular.

To the uninitiated, a Rube Goldberg machine is a virtual obstacle course of simple, unrelated objects designed to create a chain reaction.

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A favourite pastime of highly intelligent children and adults who get a kick out of time-consuming micro-level precision, successful Rube Goldberg machines tend to kick off with a single trigger, like a domino, that spirals into a complex feat of engineering-in-motion.

According to MTV, the musical duo hired director Ryan Staake and Lunatim Rex, aka the Kinetic King, a man best known for making “stick bombs,” to help put the ambitious project together.

A behind-the-scenes video shows just how much work went into setting up a Rube Goldberg machine that would be perfectly timed to A-Trak’s Tuna Melt remix.

The team deserves major bonus points for creativity. Never has toast been used to such compelling effect. And A-Trak also deserves major bonus points for his real estate savvy: the video showcases the Montreal DJ’s beautiful home to great effect.

Although the aftermath of that video must have been a pain in the derriere to clean up, the finished product proves well worth the effort.

Tuna Melt just may be the best Canada-Australia collaboration in modern history.

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And just for fun, here are a few more stellar Rube Goldberg machine videos that will take considerably less time to watch than to recreate.