Premiere: The lust and longing of Blew Velvet's "Again" video

Arts

Mar 17

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Blew Velvet has lived many lives. Whether it be a poet, an activist, a sex worker or beyond, music has been the consistent mainstay and 2020’s Frankie is a culmination of their most recent and significant journey. The last track “Again” pulsates with growing madness, the video equally juxtapositioning frenzied remembrance, playacting poses between vicarious positions as the stages of earnest and eager longing unfold. Illuminating the artist’s precision in electronic composition, Velvet characterizes a doe-eyed ask that entrées into thirst, bursting asunder in synth operatic, trilling with a Rococo wildness that teeters the line of play and psychosis. Musically, vocally and in the visual accompaniment, Velvet and co. have managed to archive the emotional encumbrance of being withheld, attached, floating, waiting.

Behind the fever of the poetically told 7-song album is a tale of endings deriving from an intensive IRL transformation, both within and without. Years of migrating from place to place, Velvet’s permanent station in NYC came from necessity: to untangle the mess that had been their life. “I was struggling with addiction and alcoholism and really abusing my community, my friendships, and more importantly myself. Towards the end of it, I went through a very rough relationship's breakup and sort of began what would (hopefully) be my last major spiral,” Velvet recalls. Making the trek with a one-way ticket on a friend’s Sky-miles, a carryon full of nothing but drag and their computer, Velvet’s sobriety taught an overwhelming amount about themself in a short period of time, especially while navigating a high-stress city whose residents emit a nonchalance about it all. Velvet channeled these circumstances, amidst healing and hope, into their music.

“Artistically, I became obsessed with the idea of pattern-breaking, in finding what things in my life were there solely to impede my own growth. I really felt a deep yearning to be able to talk about the insane couple of years I had put myself through, without just being angry about it or feeling disappointed. I wanted to be able to communicate it comfortably,” Velvet explains. “My knee-jerk reaction to emotional pain and trauma is to put it into music. Writing a breakup song feels like a universal rite of passage, or some kind of perfect language that everyone speaks.” On the cusp of 2020’s Pisces and Aries, Velvet celebrates 2 years sobriety, living their most purposeful existence, with the help of emotional expression in their autonomous sonic experimentation and the collaborative filmmaking lushly displayed in the “Again” premiere along with their recent ventures.

Velvet’s videos especially mark an elemental turn towards artistic actualization: “A Sacrifice”, highlighting the bittersweet of a break-up, steeps its electronica with sensory scapes while “A Mirror”, featuring drag icon Charlene Incarnate, exemplifies the person you’re forever attached to and never really free from: yourself. Frankie was released through Velvet’s personal label (with the help of AWAL’s distro). “The rest of the album shifts perspectives often and disguises some complex secret dialogues with innuendo and double entendre, or less comprehensible musical structures that illustrate the confusing moments and shifting attitudes within the story I was telling,” Velvet explains. “The entire thing is a big weird cross-pollinated flowering tree that's sappy and sticky in some parts, brittle and acute in others, and verdant and fruiting elsewhere.” “Again”, directed by Milan-based Altofuoco and produced by Stefano Protopapa, in complete collaboration with Velvet, is a gauzy dreamy glimpse into Frankie’s brazen beauty and breakdown, a portrayal of passion, bolstered by exquisite edits, and proof that Blew Velvet’s predicted rise will be well-deserved.

Be on the lookout for WUSSY Vol. 8 in the Shop for an in-depth interview with the artist and follow Blew Velvet on Spotify and Instagram for more content.

Directed by Altofuoco (@altofuoco) / Blew Velvet (@blew.velvet)
Produced by Stefano Protopapa / Blew Velvet
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