We Are Shining is the London production duo of Acyde and Morgan Zarate. Their style has been described to me as something like Jimi Hendrix with hip-hop beats and '60s Turkish psych inflections, and the pan-global fascination definitely carries over to this Mill+-produced video for ecstatic single "Wheel." According to Mill+ director Carl Addy, the band pulled together a collection of images from the internet meant to represent their musical influences and provide a sort of visual analog to sampling and appropriation. Clearly, the video also deals pretty heavily with notions of ethnic stereotyping and "the primitive," but from the way Addy explains the narrative behind the piece, it's also a metaphor for a coming, post-colonial, late capitalist apocalypse:
"Primitive man stumbles onto modern tribalism, which is essentially fashion and music. That is how we signify our tribes and beliefs. Of course it freaks him out, so he tries to get away from it. Everywhere he turns he is confronted by sexy dancing girls and the allure of consumerism. There is booze, there is dancing and then we encounter his temptress, the girl who breaks his resolve. We then become part of a larger global party… everyone is dancing along to the end of the world. There is a strange tripped out birth scene and then everything descends into a chaotic orgy of destruction. This leaves our tribal man broken but enlightened. The Wheel continues."
Look out for an LP from We Are Shining in 2014.