I Know Too

As the visual opens, Aerside faces us in monochrome with staring intensity. But he doesn’t meet our eyes, his gaze is somewhere beyond us. He takes a razor to his head and begins to shave. Hair swirls downward out of shot.

The sparse, industrial quality of the track’s production, matches that of his debut single, ‘Loveless’, which he described as a “mantra from a tired machine”.  On ‘I Know Too’, the blend of frosty electronic sounds scattered with warm droplets of piano and clipped vocals processed to the point of sounding post-human, we hear the influence of James Blake and visionary Sevdaliza.

Sevdaliza’s influence is also present in the strength that runs through the track, lying in its open display of vulnerability.  Aerside’s emotionally raw lyrics hint that a human heart beats at the centre of the machine.  ‘You deserve better’, he repeats. He describes the track as a ‘love letter’, but it seems fragile, clinging to control. We wonder if through shaving his head, he is reenacting the Biblical tale of Samson. As Samson lies sleeping, his lover Delilah betrays him to his enemies, cutting his hair and thus severing his source of power and his innocence. Samson is then captured and blinded.

Or perhaps, by shaving his own head, Aerside is taking control -  a step ahead of his enemies.

Symbolically rich, strange and just the right amount of ambiguous, we can’t wait to hear what’s next.