A mystery solved
Those with eidetic memories[1] may remember this post I made almost exactly 5 years ago:
A couple of nights ago, in a bout of insomnia, I ended up channel-surfing at 02:30. My attention was captured by a music video on MTV2. It was long - over 5 minutes, maybe even 10 - and featured starbursts, video-game spaceships and small octopuses (it was also a bit psychedelic, if you hadn't guessed already).
[...] Does anybody have the first clue what track/artist I'm talking about?
Today, I answered my own question, totally accidentally, by buying the album.
I'm somewhat embarrassed to notice I left out one further detail which is still fresh in my mind: I reckoned the lyrics said something about "a thousand ambassadors", which might have helped people a bit[2].
While (as it turns out) I underestimated the diplomatic quotient by three orders of magnitude[3] I was pretty close considering I was befuddled by lack of sleep:
"The Bright Ambassadors of Morning" by Pure Reason Revolution.
12 minutes long. starbursts. blurry CGI spaceships. octopoids.
Also, mellow electronic burbling, vocal harmonies (with lyrics that make no sense whatsoever) and a really good'n'heavy guitar riff at about the 8'30" mark.
[1] fx: counts raised hands. doesn't take very long.
[2] certainly helped me when I played said album for the first time and went, "hang on a minute, is that what I think it is?"
[3] the actual lyric is "a million bright ambassadors".