Aoife McArdle returns to music videos, teaming up with Belfast's dynamic electronic producer/DJ duo Bicep to create a breathtaking music video that echoes the stylish TV series she helped create.Powered by signature Bicep production style of layered elements and beats in the track Water - with vocals by Clara La San - McArdle takes us on a trip where the essential drama of the scenario drifts into surrealism and eventually, existential absurdity. A female patient (played by Angela Nwagbo) is being transported by two hospital staff members on a hospital gurney down a pure white hospital corridor - which goes on and on. This, it becomes evident, is a journey with no end in sight - perhaps no end at all. What is the point of this journey, and apparent emergency? Is the patient, sometimes under a oxygen face mask, and then not, actually ill at all?Rooms adjacent to the corridor reveal odd arrangements that exacerbate the sense of dreamlike unreality. As the patient gains agency and the physical scope of the film starts to expand, each new location takes the form of a different stream of her consciousness.McArdle creates this psycho-drama through the beautifully crafted development of a visual aesthetic, which will be familiar to those who have seen Severance, the acclaimed Apple TV+ drama that she has worked on as both director and producer - and which she discussed on The Promonews Podcast, earlier this year.As in the TV series, the pristine production design contributes to the sense of unease and dislocation. But here if anything McArdle gets the chance to break down the separation between recognisable reality and a surreal fiction even more - and play in the realm of the psyche.
Rob Ulitski - 14th Nov 2022