New York underground electronic label GODMODE, the force behind the likes of Shamir, have released the video for the first outing by Korean-American experimentalist Yaeji, ‘New York 93.’ Sung half in English and half in Korean, the song is a woozy meditation on Yaeji’s own identity, including her family’s relationship to New York itself and cultural memory. The video was directed by Anthony Sylvester of production company CUTSDATFLO and presents a series of hypnotic soft-focus and superimposed shots of Yaeji herself traversing the city.
Watch below.
The song and video is part of GODMODE’s series Faculty, a weekly experimental series chaired by the label’s co-founder Nick Sylvester. Talking about the concept behind the series, Sylvester said: “The Faculty Series comes from my growing boredom with the idea of the “artist” as an organising principle. Think about how many rules and expectations there are when you present music as an “artist” – the need for cohesion, an origin story, some core “brand promise” or What You’re About. The “artist” tag is a creative albatross, and the arbitrary aesthetic rules artists set for themselves often keep them away from their best and most necessary expressions.”
He continues: “The Faculty Series is an experiment. I’m trying to get people to abandon the artist as an organizing principle and make the music that the moment wants them to make, with no consideration for How It All Fits Together or whether it’s off-brand for them.”
GODMODE will continue to release new additions to the Faculty Series in the coming months. Listen to the series so far on their SoundCloud page.
