With a metallic glare trained on our current political and social dystopia, NAKED brought their industrial avant-pop to Dazed’s alternative national anthems project, literally vomiting for the acerbic “Spit”. The band’s 2016 debut album ZONE is an unsparing, sensory-overloading experience that unpacks isolation, sex and power in a digital age. Now, the Edinburgh duo has released two companion videos, “Slow” and “Body Mod”. 

The first in the diptych is the dark, sinister “Slow”, which Agnes Gryczkowska and Alex Johnston says, “brings the male down from his pedestal”, where he is “forced to confront himself and his own weaknesses. It shows pain, violence and eroticism before total submission.”

The male character is frail, in contrast to the female character, a warrior princess that Gryczkowska and Johnston say represents the male’s powerful thoughts and fears. “This video is pointing towards the idea of construction of fear, its administration and abuse – one of the greatest political and capitalistic tool,” they observe. 

“Body Mod” zones in on the feminine form. “Fetishised, restrained, yet still powerful,” the duo says, weathered by seen and unseen forces at work in society. A brighter, starkly unflinching visual, it dives into the space given to desire, sex, love and intimacy in a virtual world. 

“The female body acts as an allegory of, as the title suggests, the modified and commodified female form and our desires,” explains Gryczkowska and Johnston. “The performance shows the body fighting against the restrains, it is gradually becoming fragmented, weaker.”

The LuckyMe signees have created two visually stunning, opposing projects that dissect our most human characteristics, and how fear, pain, physicality plays out in our politically fractured society. The harsh, intense sonic manipulation by the band to provoke intense emotion plays out across their body of work. “We use these as tools in order to make a statement about combating political and social restrains, accepted norms and standards,” NAKED affirm. “These videos and the music are meant to be empowering, and are focused on challenging the forces which control us and dictate our paths and choices, just because we are allowing them…”