Features I by I 26.06.16

The week’s best videos: Aphex Twin, nude celebrities and ‘80s darkwave

Welcome to FACT’s weekly video round-up.

As we note at the end of every year, music videos have never been better. But too often, music videos — along with documentaries, live sets and interview clips — get lost in the shuffle of news and new music.

With that in mind, FACT is doing what it does for mixes, mixtapes, vinyl and more: rounding up the internet’s best videos on a weekly basis. And to remove our bias, we won’t be including our own content — you’ll have to stay tuned to FACT TV for all your Against The Clock, FACT Freestyles and Confessions needs.

Read more: The 20 best music videos of 2015


Kanye West
’Famous’

Kanye turns contemporary, Renaissance-inspired art – Vincent Desiderio’s Sleep – into a comment on celebrity culture. Celebs in the West-Kardashian universe – from George W. Bush and Donald Trump to Rihanna and Chris Brown to Taylor Swift and Anna Wintour – are recreated as creepy, nude wax figures. A voyeuristic camera captures them sleeping, combining the titillation of a celebrity sex tape with the uneasiness of the video tapes in Michael Haneke’s Cache. Naturally, Kanye is the only “woke” one in the bunch.


Aphex Twin
‘CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix]’
Dir: Ryan Wyer

For his first video for 17 years, re-teaming with the legendary Chris Cunningham would have been too predictable for Aphex Twin. Instead, he picked YouTuber Ryan Wyer, a 12-year-old from Dublin. Thankfully, the result is just as unsettling – if much more lo-fi – than those Cunningham videos. Wyer and his pre-teen siblings and friends wear masks, try Vine-ready dances and generally freak the fuck out as the palette alternates between bleached out and super-saturated. The best part? It’s “to be continued.”


Jenny Hval
‘Female Vampire’
Dir: Jenny Berger Myhre

In this slow motion, strobe-lit video, Jenny Hval leads a coven of ‘Female Vampires’ as they literally press the flesh, pulling off the masks that cleanse but obscure their faces in a communal cereony.


Thundercat
‘Song For The Dead’
Dir: Ryan McShane

21-year-old Ryan McShane teams with Thundercat for the animated video for ‘Song For The Dead’. As its title suggests, the psychedelic video is a meditation on death, loss and memory, following the soul of Thundercat’s lupine companion as it ascends to the next plane of existence.


What So Not x George Maple feat. Rome Fortune
‘Buried’
Dir: Leticia Dare

Leticia Dare’s gorgeous footage gradually unveils its surprising narrative: those aren’t two lovers trapped in an underwater ballet, and Rome Fortune – running through puddles armed with a crowbar – isn’t a menace, he’s a savior.


Nite Jewel
‘Boo Hoo’
Dir: Emilia Kurylowicz

In the same way that Nite Jewel revisits ‘80s darkwave, the ‘Boo Hoo’ video flips the script on the “girl on a car” tropes of ‘80s hair metal videos. Built on repetition and second-long loops of movement, Nite Jewel chugs champagne out of a Big Gulp and ‘Boo Hoos’ a relationship, her clothes sheer and her face streaked with tears.


Maxo Kream
‘Big Worm’
Dir: Nassacre

Maxo Kream pays tribute to Big Worm, the Friday villain who drove an ice cream truck, in the video for this Wiley-sampling banger. As expected, the colorful, childlike joy of the ice cream truck is subverted by gunplay, gang signs and a twerk team doing lawn work.


Obey City feat. Kelela
‘Airy’ (Jensen Sportag Alt. Take)
Dir: Peter Marsden

Jensen Sportag’s delicate remix of Obey City’s Kelela-featuring ‘Airy’ receives its own video, focusing on the personal moments of self-reflection before and in-between the equally-delicate movements of ballet dancer Sonoya Mizuno.


Antwon
‘Dri-Fit’
Dir: The 90s

Antwon hangs out in the heavily-Hispanic Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park and connects with El Electrico, a neon-light covered dancer who performs at quinceañeras and brings his cowboy dance crew along for the ride.


Space Dimension Controller
‘The Bad People’
Dir: Jacob Chabeaux

Bookended by the eyes of a mysterious hooded figure, ‘The Bad People’ follows a neon dreamscape comprised of peaks and valleys and a geometric superhighway.


PARTYNEXTDOOR
‘Come and See Me’
Dir: Adrian Martinez

‘Come and See Me’ is so over-the-top that it borders on self-parody: PND plays piano and hangs out with his major label friends while Kyle Jenner (in what might be her non-reality TV acting debut) applies her (branded) makeup and looks despondent while following him on social media. But fear not, Kardishi-fans: they end up kissing in the fakest rainstorm of all time. Like most Kardashian-Jenner projects, this is all sizzle and no steak.

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