The music video for ‘Legs’, the hypnotic and hallucinatory new visual by Fake Turins, provides context to the London outfit as an audiovisual collective. Last Friday (26.06) Fake Turins debuted a project long in the making, an online broadcast entitled ‘FAKE TV’, the first episode of many, and a mesmeric experience. Today we’re premiering the video for ‘Legs’, we also talked with Fake Turins spokesperson Dominic Rose about the projects roots and regulations.
While the band’s live show explores their music with ten onstage members, the number of people that make up the collective is unknown. “Fake Turins has always existed as more than a music project” states Rose, “though the central interest for me is where the individual parts can exist for themselves — creating a more profound unity when met”.
Fake Turins exist within the North London warehouse community. Though Rose is London-born, in the past he has described the capital as a city that can give but also take away from something. A fast-paced and money driven city brimming with opportunity has a price tag in 2020 too high for artistic endeavours to prosper. The rise of COVID-19 has offered a stark realisation of the economic and cultural value of the music and arts sector but predominately of it’s fragility.
On the subject of the creative confines of the Harringay Warehouse District located on a former industrial site in South Tottenham, Rose is keen to avoid any labelling or talk about the nebulous spirits of venues or a ‘North London scene’, he mentions, “no matter where we are, the creative roots of this project will blossom through the cracks”. But, is the project’s creativity helped along by it’s shared living quarters and endless line of creative minds within, also access to banging psychedelics that fuel the relentless rolling rhythm of their new single? “It’s less a question of where we are together and more how we seek to express that togetherness. The limitations and distance then become tools with which we carve into the ideas”.
The debut ‘FAKE TV’ broadcast, which will be followed by another episode very soon, explored mental health and human design. These are certainly subjects of huge complexity, which the audiovisual collective tackle through text and rudimentary graphics. It harks back to the introduction of teletext by major broadcasters in the mid 70’s, which spearheaded the commercial use of the television system in the 80’s for news, weather and even booking holidays. Popular use of teletext saw a dramatic decline as early Internet systems were introduced into homes, the broadcast served as a stark reminder of not only how long we’ve been staring at screens for direction and reality, but also our reliance on technology for personal validation.
The deeper question and meaning of ‘Legs’ regards mental heath, and how in 2020 it’s a term mishandled and misrepresented in mainstream media. While the song itself, as Rose put it, regards an “Exploration of rhythm and the capacity to shift time to make the unnatural feel natural”, it was a piece of once lost poetry that gave the track it’s deeper meaning, “(the music) gave way to the poem I had written (originally many years ago) when coping with loss and struggling to explore my own mental health”.
“To suffer is a profoundly human experience, but to seek treatment and know our own limitations is to put strength and faith back into ourselves and our community”. – Dominic Rose.
As Fake Turins dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a “longer release of unheard material”, whilst continuing the visually sensational ‘FAKE TV’ broadcasts, the collective have plans afoot for the creation of a short film which will further explore the themes of mental health and human design.
It’s the idea of community and collaboration that set the collective apart from it’s peers, something the music industry and artists themselves are often too soon to dismiss. ‘Legs’, the new single by Fake Turins is out now, you can also find the band on Spotify here.
By Karl Johnson
hardofhearingmagazine.com 