German-Brazilian Gloria De Oliveira has many guises: musician, visual artist, and actor, known for her work in the German neo-noir television series Babylon Berlin. Now she has unveiled her spellbinding video for Gudrun Gut’s remix for her tack The Only Witness from her EP Lèvres De Sang.
The original version of 2020’s The Only Witness (Reptile Music) was the lead single from her acclaimed compilation album Fascination. The album was released by Reptile Music, including the 10 remastered songs of her two previous EPs, as well as seven additional remixes on CD by artists such as Box And The Twins, Fragrance, Tellavision, and The Wide Eye. This ingenious remix was created by legendary artist and producer Gudrun Gut.
Gudrun Gut (Mania D, Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria!) sprung from the “ingenious dilettantes” subculture of early 1980’s Berlin. She founded influential record labels Moabit Musik and Monika Enterprise, and has collaborated as radio presenter and producer.
“(Gudrun Gut) is an artist whose sheer existence never fails to inspire and motivate me,” says De Oliveria. “To me, she represents someone who is constantly challenging and reinventing themselves and finding new approaches to their work – technically, as well as thematically – while still retaining a leitmotif throughout, at least in my eyes – an artist obviously having fun with it, carving out an artistic presence full of integrity, humanity, and innovation.”
In 2017, De Oliveira began releasing tracks under the project name lovespells, culminating in the 5-track EP Lua Azul. Since then, she has been working on new tracks under her own name, performing concerts at Uebel & Gefährlich, Further Festival, and c/o pop. She later released La Rose De Fer and Lèvres De Sang on her own label La Double Vie in 2019. Gloria de Oliveira’s bewitching sound spectrum, situated somewhere between Dreamwave, Ethereal, and synth-infused goth Pop, evokes an intimate yet cinematic atmosphere, corresponded by her self-directed video.
The realization of her musical vision for this particular track took several years to gel. For this, Gloria de Oliveira, a filmmaker in her own right, team up with director Julia Ritschel. Ritschel, part of the German queer film scene, gained clout with her lesbian short film La Cigale et la Fourmi, screened at numerous LGBTQ film festivals and an official selection at the renowned Palm Springs Short Fest in 2016. She currently works as a freelance filmmaker and music video director. This is Julia Ritschel’s third artistic collaboration with Gloria de Oliveira.
“We were looking to mirror the hypnotic, dreamlike quality of the track through a somnambulant remix of the original music video footage,” she says. The eerie, dreamlike video of women inside a car also features Karmela Shako.
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