Electronic duo Bicep Share Spellbinding New Music Video for “Saku” ft. Clara La San

Electronic duo Bicep are set to release their new album Isles on January 22nd, along with a livestream show broadcasted from London’s Saatchi Gallery on February 26th. With both dates approaching, their recently shared single “Saku” featuring Clara La San has been given a mesmerizing new music video, directed by David Bertram of The Dipolmats.

About the dance track, Bicep share, ““We’d been working with Clara La San on a number of demos and sent her a super stripped back version of the ‘Saku’ drums and bass elements which she built upon, bringing a strong 90s UKG / R’n’b vibe, which we’d been working at on some of the other demos. In addition to this we flipped it again with some haunting synths at the end, trying to really bring contrast and opposing dark and light elements to the track. We always try to pull together a real hybrid of our influences, it was great for us to get so many directions into this track.”

Bicep (Photo courtesy of Take Aim Media)

The glossy drum n bass elements mix with the undertones of mystery and unease, and Bertram discovered a way to bring that into a visual piece. He explains:

“When I received Bicep’s song, Saku, I was struck by two things. The first was the contrast between this sense of urgency conveyed by the beat and the tempo, and the dreamlike floating voices and synths. There’s a very interesting paradox in this song, which is an excellent starting point for a filmmaker. The second is this continuous tone that lasts throughout the whole track, held by the background voice that can be heard behind the instruments“.

“The latter immediately led me to a desire for continuous movement, like a train on rails, a line that never stops moving forward. That’s how I came up with the idea of a single take. The rather dark and minor chords of the track naturally took me to a psychological playground, a territory I particularly like and which I have been exploring regularly in my work…”

“Having a music video take on an intimate story was appealing to me. The female voice of Clara La San naturally led me to tell the story of a girl. A father-daughter relationship, a story about teenagehood and emancipation, and the guilt it engenders. My wish was to visually symbolise this guilt, as a real trap: the girl can’t manage to leave her doorstep, until her father saves her by understanding her mindset, bringing us to a resolution that we all wanted, deep and moving”.

The dizzying staircase and one-take fluidness quickly brings viewers into a spell, as the protagonist works her way through the loop. Watch the music video below: