As a singer for the Russian alternative rock band Glintshake Katya Shilonosova, Kate NV is a well-known name. Establishing a side project by herself outside of the band though, she has explored her love of oddball pop such as the music of Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Above, you can watch a video for ‘DANCE’, Kate NV’s new single. It’s a delightfully leftfield slice of pop, with glimmering synths that build and crescendo. The track features on her album, Binasu, which is out now, and can be purchased here.
"This video partially quotes a gloomy and dark Russian black-and-white cartoon from the ’90s where everything is very slow and repetitive, almost nothing happens and it’s unbearable," says Kate NV. "The main character just walks in a circle from one door to another and Ravel’s Bolero is playing as a soundtrack.
"’DANCE’ always reminded me a little of Bolero, so we decided to try to recreate this atmosphere of an unbearable but fascinating loop. Gustaf [Holtenas, who made the video] found it really similar to an old video game (that’s how we found our main character) and I also thought that the whole thing is similar to a ‘dream’ when you are stuck and you cannot escape from the loop and nothing can be really explained."
Gustaf Holtenas adds: "The initial idea was to make a single scened, repetative video. Like a GIF. Deriving the story from a simple concept. Just like a long animated Tarkovsky shot where things slowly evolves but nevertheless keeps the viewer intrigued. Cause it felt like an stimulating challenge, how can one keep this scene going for six minutes and still please the viewer? Did we succeed? Is there a payoff of this monotonicity? Take a look!
"The aesthetics of the video take inspiration from traditional surrealistic painters, anime and ’70s sci-fi, like a mash-up of Magritte, Akira and Moebius. There is a direct reference to video games as well, with the isometric perspective as well of the infinite spawning of the characters, like the cute game Lemmings from 1991."
