A biochemist's homemade snowflake grower brings to life the fragile ambiance of an electronic song in a new music video.

Called "Cascades," by U.K. artist Ryan Teague, the video took months of planning, four days of shooting and roughly two terabytes of photos to animate the growth of hard-to-create ice crystals.

"The dancing, contorting trees you see at the beginning of the video are ice structures – most no more than a fraction of a millimetre across – which were grown on the tip of an electrically charged, motorized needle," said video director and producer Craig Ward in a press release.

Biochemist and professional photographer Linden Gledhill built the ice crystal-making machine at the request of Ward, who had heard of Gledhill's clever engineering solutions for capturing tricky photographic subjects (such as flying insects and splattering paint).

After Gledhill tinkered for a few months in his basement workshop in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, Ward and a small crew flew to the United States to shoot Teague's new video.

To see how the icy photography rig works, don't miss Wired's exclusive look at Gledhill's machine. A behind-the-scenes time-lapse video (below) also takes a close look at the device.

Video Top: villagegreen181/YouTube Video Bottom: Craig Ward/Vimeo