Synopsis

They Might Be Giants recast their familiar city-name anthem as a surreal electronic performance piece. The band appears in a deliberately dated, low-budget-looking setup, surrounded by rapid cuts, synthetic colors, odd gestures, and imagery that seems to drift beneath the surface of the water. The retro staging clashes playfully with the robotic arrangement, while the underwater material adds a dreamlike, slightly disorienting quality. Rather than presenting a conventional narrative, the video turns the song into a collage of performance, visual absurdity, and aquatic strangeness.

Factoids & Trivia

• The recording was made specifically as the soundtrack for a new video rather than as a routine remake for an album. It was later included on the 2011 rarities collection *Album Raises New and Troubling Questions*.

• Although the track sounds fully programmed and machine-made, the band recorded it live together in a room. The electronic version was designed to sound like synth-pop while retaining the energy of a group performance.

• The production uses a circuit-bent Speak & Spell, a Roland SP-303 sampler, a microKORG with vocoder, and an Alesis Micron synthesizer.

• The robotic voice asking "shall we play?" is sampled from WOPR, the computer system in the 1983 film *WarGames*.

• Additional underwater footage was supplied by Chris Smith, giving the video its most distinctive visual contrast with the staged electronic performance.

• The song is effectively a remake of a remake: They Might Be Giants' well-known 1990 recording was already a cover of the Four Lads' 1953 original, while "Electronic Istanbul" reworks the band's own version.