LIA LIA has always been the master of her creative vision. The half-German, half-Chinese singer released her debut EP Love & Melancholy last year, its molten riffs and self-examining lyrics setting out LIA LIA’s vision of what an alt-rock star could be. Its opening track “I’m a Moth!!” was accompanied by a music video as surreal as its name, with the singer emerging from a block of flats in Moscow dressed as a moth, looting a guitar shop then storming the stage of a packed-out gig.

The clip was devised and directed by LIA herself, a practice the musician continued when she dropped the “I ride my bike” video this September, the lead single from her newly released second EP Angst. But when it came time to create the next music video for the EP’s title track, LIA changed tack, enlisting the help of creative duo KINOPROBY.

Ceding creative control wasn’t something that the musician was willing to do for just anyone. “Usually I’m such a control freak and do everything myself,” LIA says, “but I fell in love with them and their vision. I’ve never felt so connected – I think we share some neurons in our brains or something.” It was during her first phone call with Evgenij Romashov and Ola Romashova – the art director duo that make up KINOPROBY – that this connection was established. LIA had asked if the pair had seen the 2001 film All About Lily Chou-Chou, and was thrilled to learn that KINOPROBY were also Asian cinema buffs. The melancholic coming-of-age tale chronicles the lives of disaffected Japanese youth via the protagonist’s obsession with avant-pop star Lily Chou-Chou, and quickly became the main source of inspiration for the “Angst” video. “I love banality, surreal realism and working with tropes from movies, especially because the music video genre is such a short format,” explained LIA. “You don’t have much time to build characters or stories. With KINOPROBY, it felt like we shot a whole movie. They build the perfect world for my character to exist in.”

Shot using grainy, Y2K-style camcorders – so the viewer can “peek into the characters’ intimacy” as KINOPROBY put it – a school-uniformed LIA is asleep on a tram, before she’s eventually met by her love interest. Their tumultuous relationship is documented in every laugh, every swig of alcohol, every embrace in the rain. At points they both giggle as a train rushes past and they listen to their CD Walkman; other times they look anguished as LIA bandages her bruised and bloodied boyfriend’s face. Like the film it draws from, the video is a cross-section of an angst-ridden youth, in all its beautiful, brutal glory. KINOPROBY perfectly sum up the universe that they and LIA have created, describing the clip as a “world of lovers… very fragile, full of understated details and toxic moments.” It’s this beguiling image of youth that makes “Angst” LIA LIA’s most potent video yet.

Angst EP is out now via Next Wave Records / Ultra Records.

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