This was posted earlier this evening.

It’s a…departure…to say the least. For one, we finally get what sounds like a full song with minimal distortion. Also, iamamiwhoami appears without her trademark face paint. Instead, she has donned a handmade outfit made of what appears to be plastic wrap held together with Scotch tape. The room has also changed, and we see two men (who could either be actors or band members) and lots of black cats. There is no more “code” and the piece is much longer, which leads me to believe this video is the first part of a new series of short films by iamamiwhoami & company.

Overall, the tone of this one feels pretty sad. The emphasis on aging and time plays a big part in this. We watch, for instance, the two men’s faces change as the sand falls in the hourglass and the withering “womandrake” plays her song. Her trademark long eyelashes have curled and turned gray, and all the lush colors of the previous videos are gone. The clip linked to in the video’s YouTube description shows one of those creepy beauty pageants for little girls, a move that makes yet another reference to lost youth. I’m really beginning to wonder if the artist behind these mini-films is looking to make a statement on beauty or femininity. I’ve been reading a lot about those concepts in a class I’m taking now, and it seems to fit. After all, iamamiwhoami has made a point of obscuring her face and making herself alien-looking and “ugly.” Even her name suggests an identity crisis, seeing as it can be read as “I am. Am I? Who am I?”

Suffice to say, there’s no chance at all that this could be Christina Aguilera. The music sounds more organic, and the vocalist clearly sings with a European accent. This is clearly an unknown artist, which I have suspected from the start. Whoever she/they are, they certainly have a future ahead of them. Even though this piece is more conventional, it’s still haunting and mixes electronic and organic sounds in a really compelling way. I still have a nagging suspicion that this may be a pseudo-surrealist art project aimed at the masses and not a singer/band at all, but I hope there will be an album made in the end regardless.

‘There it was, the love that I gave
We should pack our things and run away,
Resting in quicksand,
Shoulder to shoulder,
Hand in hand,
Slowly letting go, take flight,
Let sadness take us into the light,
Take a deep breath as we go,
As we go…