Qasim Naqvi returns with a new video for the track “No Tongue,” off his recently released Teenages LP out now via Erased Tapes. The video is directed by Christina Burchard and stars dancer Matthew ‘ET’ Gibbs. Bouchard had discovered Gibbs on Instagram and was a huge fan. The director reports that the dancer is a bone breaker, explaining that this style of movement “involves mostly arm contortion, an optical illusion that makes it appear he is breaking his body to create new shapes.”
Reflecting on Naqvi’s music, which was created using a voltage-controlled modular synthesizer the musician built over a two year period, Bouchard explains:
“The track “No Tongue” is minimal, cerebral, and the harmonic shifts and strange sounds that appear throughout give it an otherworldly vibe. Qasim and I talked a lot about his relationship to this album and how he felt sometimes he was dealing with another consciousness inside the machine, and the experience was more like a conversation with a sometimes unwelcome host. These conversations conjured images in my mind of aliens, artificial intelligent machines, or parasitic organisms that affect the brain…“
Feeling that Gibbs style of movement fit perfectly with this vision of Qasim Naqvi’s music, Bouchard also chose a haunting location for the “No Tongue” video shoot. The director contacted a gentleman in East LA that owned three World War II bunkers and used one of them for the video’s location. Coupled often with eery red lighting, these visuals create a spellbinding mood not soon forgotten.
