Darkwave act Hante. reveals her harrowing video for “Wild Animal”, one of her best songs yet, featuring forlorn pop vocals that echo sounds from from the mid-to-late 80s fused with mesmerizing proto-trance rhythms.
On writing the song, Hante’s Hélène de Thoury explains:
“I wrote this song just after watching the documentary “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” on Netflix about the DJ and producer Steve Aoki. At some point, he received a text, one of his best friends just died from an overdose. And he has to go on stage to DJ this night. So he’s playing, the scene is on slow motion and you can see the lights, strobe lights, the people dancing, having fun.
While Steve Aoki is having a really hard time. He’s giving everything and you can see him crying at the same time. His long hair flies in the air and he looks likes he’s going wild. This scene moved me and the lyrics is describing this moment when he lost control of himself.
At a moment in the documentary, he said that his friend was always saying “Starve the ego, feed the soul”, that’s why I’m using those words too.”
Watch the video below:
The video for “Wild Animal” was directed by Ouroboros, the visual arts partnership of Jeremy Carne and Nikolas Kasinos. In the beautifully shot, edited, and graded clip, the pair explores the unconscious though projection of the shadow self. The video follows someone trapped between dream and reality, within a space where memory and experience become deceptive. Forced to repeat a broken cycle, a woman is searching for control in a battle against time.
As Ouroboros, their very first video together was “The Storm” for Hante., which imagined a parallel world of surreal creatures shot in the dark streets of Hackney, London. Five years later they have come full-circle.
“Wild Animal” hails from Hante.’s new album FIERCE, due out January 18th via Metropolis Records/Synth Religion. Check out the cover and tracklisting below:
Hante.- FIERCE
- Tomorrow is a New Day
- Wild Animal
- Unknown (feat. Sólveig Matthildur)
- Serre-moi Encore
- Nobody’s Watching (feat. Marble Slave & Fragrance)
- Waiting for a Hurricane
- RESPECT
- No Tenderness (feat. Ætervader)
- Silence the Voices
- The Moon Song (feat. Box von Düe)
- Never Over
- I Don’t Need a Hero*
- Wild Animal (Drumless Version)*
*bonus tracks