When we spoke to Yves Tumor last year around the release of their debut album Serpent Music, the experimental musician remarked on an upcoming music video they were making for “Broke In”, describing it as a screenplay “based around biohacking and cloning, and feeling trapped.” The finished video makes good on the promise, telling its story with a creepy, lo-fi visual set to Yves’ digital noise.
The lyrics, by UK-based Oxhy (a member of online underground crew Xquisite Nihil, who features on the song), explore the claustrophobia and urban paranoia of living in London. “It’s about feeling crushed by the city of London, walking around the streets and feeling no escape, feeling like the city you’re from wants you out,” says Oxhy. “Needing release, but at the same time constantly remembering the violence that the desire for freedom as a male has meant, historically and currently. Being bound between these two moments turns into this undead, lethargic panic, which was the state of mind the lyrics came from.”
The video itself, directed by Berlin-based Sam Dye and Bliss Resting, was elaborated from a single shot that Yves and Oxhy had envisioned. “Oxhy was completely buried in the dirt, with only his eyes and mouth in the frame,” Yves explains. “I later introduced the idea to the genius mind of Bliss Resting, and together we slowly structured a storyline around her original screenplay.”
“Oxhy is the real star of this film,” Dye and Resting add in a joint statement. “We put him through so much, it’s fantastic to have such dedicated people to work with. Always a star, no matter how much he’s choking. We tend to meddle a lot with identity in our film, and in this one particularly with cloning and and where the self lies. Could you share a self? We just grew out of nothing. Or almost nothing...”
“There was plenty of doubt and anger,” they continue. “It’s a very emotional process for us, to make a film. I hope it shows in our work. We just put out another short film called WORLD PEACE. Another film, definitely another battle.”
Watch the video above.
