Post-punk trio Topographies engages with the Lacanian existential questions relating to life and one’s own identity in their icy debut LP, Ideal Form, out now via Funeral Party. The album’s themes involve “the projections human beings place upon experience and the impossibility of a perfectly realized existence.”
This is perfectly encapsulated in the group’s enigmatic video for the track “False Desire”, shot in black and white, with each band members’ faces framed impassively in closeup against a collage of abstract artistic imagery.
On the influences of art and cinema expressed in “False Desire”, the band state that the clip is:
“Inspired by the paintings of Kandinsky, early 20th century abstract films, and the work of Sergej Eisenstein l, Julian Gabriel Bendaña’s video for “False Desire” explores the “self-portrait as landscape,” probing the mask-like expressions of Tolhurst, Rüest, and Oronos for the minute movements that trace a topography of desire.”
Watch the video, directed by Julian Gabriel Bendaña, below:
Topographies’ Ideal Form is out now, and our pick for album of the month for December 2020.
Read our interview with bandleader Grey Tolhurst, and purchase the album here.
