Faded Away / Nite Bites

It is fascinating to see how the aesthetic resources of a particular artistic period continue to be an unlimited source of inspiration for the creators of the moment. The ‘Faded Away / Nite Bites‘ music video directed by Clément Oberto is a complex musical and cinematic product whose affinities with the 70s and 80s aesthetics are not just about the electronic nuances that Nite Bites filter through the hypnotic vibe of slightly lascivious female solos, but also about the visual personal touch of some of the most contrasting films of the same decades. Designed as a slow-motion nocturnal adventure through the chimeras of an amorous-fetishist escapade, but also through the guilty pleasures of the great American cities, the video of the French band (composed of Gilles Bousquet and Nic Nicola) excels through an obsessive sound at the limit of a post-narcotic trance. It is already known that recent generations of relatively underground French musicians have found in the electro-electropop aesthetic area a great regenerative potential artistic field, concentrating all their creative energy in exploring the still undiscovered capacities of artificial, mechanical sound to determine or invent that music of the future, that bizarre inner harmony of the human-robot who will inhabit the planet. No matter how metaphorically such an assertion may sound, the similarities between the musical-strident vibe of Nite Bites’ Faded Away, the post-human / emotional-robotic echoes of Kavinsky’s ‘Nightcall’, or the almost surrealist delirium of Vitalic’s compositions are not at all exaggerated in the context of an uplifting homogeneous artistic direction that aims to configure the synthesizer processed harmonies of an uncertain, quasi-sci-fi future governed by human-cybernetic hybrids.

A series of recognizable props – a vintage car, a discreet motel, detached from the greedy vibration of the nocturnal wanderers, a pool with dazzling colourful reflections – which delineate such a representative topos of the nightly odysseys by L.A.’s dark magic marks the periplus of a couple through the naughty fetishes of decadent bourgeoisie. A mysterious woman with feline movements slowed down by the somnolence of the atmosphere as if it were hampered by the breathing of the drug addicts, a stunned man in his filthy mental projections, but also a voluptuous ritual of lazy gestures, lights and shadows that ultimately draw the premises an extravagant farce: here are the pieces of this dark and sensual puzzle orchestrated by the group of French artists.

Enjoying an attractive image whose contrasting chromatic has its descendance in the fascinating red-and-blue stridencies of the famous ‘Suspiria’ directed by Dario Argento, this epic and intense video, ornamented by a sound resembling Enigma’s acoustic experiments, manages to give both the viewer and the listener an exciting experience in the inner, slightly nostalgic world of the new dreamers’ generation. Not by accident, Nite Bites defines their own musical project with the title “New Romantics going to L.A.” which, beyond the euphonies of a song like Faded Away, also enjoys the visual support created by director Clément Oberto, embodying a bizarre and captivating product both for the 70s and 80s amateurs, and for today’s generations.