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Music

Decoding Amnesia Scanner's New Video Is Impossible, and That's the Point

The microbially fractured "AS WANT IT" is off their debut EP 'AS' for Young Turks.

Berlin duo, Amnesia Scanner, have continued to paint their artistic persona in hidden messages, sharing a cryptic third video from their debut AS EP for London label Young Turks today in "AS WANT IT." Like the abused robot dog-starring clip for "AS CRUST," a canine finds itself the center of attention here, too, but this one emanates a more malicious aura. The demon-eyed, tail-in-mouth figure looks a little like a micro-detail from a depiction of hell by 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, juxtaposing the duo's very contemporary, microbially fracturing take on trap beats with a ferocious image that seems centuries-old.

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Since launching their project, the duo has been careful to keep information about themselves hidden, avoiding interviews and cultivating their media presence instead through an aggressively maximalist visual aesthetic, exemplified by the recent nonlinear, impossible to follow, but totally exhilarating video for "AS CHINGY." You even need a username and password—which you probably cannot get—to access their website, which inexplicably racks up notifications if you leave the window open for a few minutes.

This kind of encrypted aesthetic—which they share with Oslo producer Aedrhlsomrs Othryutupt Lauecehrofn, aka TCF—recalls internet-based cryptography culture, and this notion of "hiding" meaning extends to the content of their tracks and videos, this video being a prime example. Why soundtrack this demonic dog, moving in a weightlessly modulating zoom through the screen, with their spliced and disarrayed take on poppy club music? All the considered labor they've clearly put into it would suggest a carefully-plotted motivation, but they really leave it up to us to figure it out. And it's not easy decoding to do: each gesture they make seems to simultaneously point to and obfuscate its own reference.

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